^ROSSELLHEKIS 


DEPRECIATIONS 


DEPRECIATIONS 

B.  RUSSELL  HERTS 


NEW  YORK 

ALBERT  &  CHARLES  BONI 
1914 


Copyright,   1914 

By 
ALBERT  &  CHARLES  BONI 


To  EDWARD  GOODMAN 
my  friend 


Certain  of  the  following  essays  have  ap 
peared  in  The  Forum,  The  Independent,  The 
International,  Moods,  The  Book  News 
Monthly,  The  Medical  Review  of  Reviews, 
The  New  Age  (London). 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Explanation    9 

The  Import  of  the  Superficial 11 

Little  Arnold  Bennett 17 

Art  and  Affectation 27 

The  Shadowy  Mr.  Yeats 33 

George  Moore  the  Mundane 41 

The  Fetich  of  Sincerity 59 

G.     K.     Chesterton:     Defender    of    the 

Discarded    65 

A  Visit  to  G.  K.  C 87 

A  Visit  to  H.  G.  Wells 93 

The  Tragedy  of  the  Finalist 105 

Pinero  the  Punctilious   109 

Jottings  in  Europe   115 

The  Tired  Business  Man    151 

The  Unmarrying  Modern  Male  159 

The  Kingdom  of  this  World 165 


EXPLANATION 

Some  of  these  essays  were  written  before 
this  volume  was  contemplated,  but  almost  all 
are  aimed  at  a  revision  of  accepted  values. 
They  are  given  their  collective  title  of  Depre 
ciations  because  the  people  and  ideas  depre 
ciated  are  all,  in  my  opinion,  ones  overvalued 
by  our  generation. 

I  do  not  imagine  that  I  have  cut  in  pieces 
either  the  one  or  the  other.  This  book  is 
a  sword-thrust  that  may,  indeed,  be  no  more 
than  a  pen-prick.  Moore,  Yeats,  Bennett, 
Wells,  Chesterton  and  the  rest  remain  impos 
ing,  and  so  I  recognize  them;  marriage,  reli 
gion,  the  effort  at  fundamentalities  and  finali 
ties,  these  too  remain  important  to  humanity. 
I  have  merely  given  expression  to  my  present 
personal  reaction  to  them;  I  may  feel  differ 
ently  in  a  year — and  then  there  may  be  another 
book  for  you  to  read. 

But  for  the  moment  I  offer  only  these  essays 
as  an  offensive  and  defensive  expression  of 
my  opinion,  and  I  hope  they  may  provoke  a 
corresponding  activity  on  the  part  of  those  who 
cannot  accept  them;  for  by  such  encounters 
the  truth,  or  as  much  of  it  as  is  necessary  for 
us  at  any  one  time,  comes  to  prevail. 

B.  R.  H. 

20  West  57th  Street,  New  York. 
9 


THE  IMPORT  OF  THE  SUPERFICIAL 

The  world  has  become  noisy  with  f  undamen- 
talities.  Everywhere  we  see  little  people  strut 
ting  about  looking  for  the  bottoms  of  things. 
Folk  whose  fathers  were  content  to  dabble 
around  in  their  own  particular  set  of  stupidi 
ties  without  speculating  much  further  than  the 
following  Saturday's  payroll  are  now  discuss 
ing  problems  and  movements  and  fundamental 
things  generally. 

Dissatisfaction  with  things  as  they  exist  is 
pretty  general  and  the  little  people  have  started 
out  to  adjust  it  and  bring  to  solution  the  dif 
ficulties  of  the  ages.  The  expense  in  good 
black  ink  and  good  heavy  paper  to  which  the 
world  has  been  put  to  publish  the  panaceas  of 
perplexed  nonentities  has  never  been  so  great 
as  it  is  to-day.  The  stage  is  largely  occupied 
by  puerile  problem  plays  while  the  press  is 
compelled  by  popular  demand  to  dispense  still 
more  puerile  propaganda  articles.  The  cults 
and  the  isms  are  thriving  and  any  one  can 

11 


12  DEPRECIATIONS 

start  a  movement  who  has  six  personal  friends, 
a  studio  and  a  touch  of  paranoia. 

So  we  have  all  these  little  people  roving  the 
realms  of  sociology,  science,  philosophy  and 
morals,  with  big  black  spectacles  fastened  to 
their  craning  faces  and  geological  hammers 
ready  to  knock  off  projections  everywhere  on 
our  later  half -petrified  formations,  and  to  get 
down  to  what  they  expect  will  be  bed  rock. 
We  hear  it  said  that  there  is  no  movement 
that  has  not  its  usefulness;  and,  indeed,  the 
Theosophists,  the  Single  Taxers,  the  Eugen- 
ists  and  the  Cubists,  with  all  the  hundred  other 
manifestations  of  desire  for  better  things  in 
each  of  their  fields,  each  and  all  have  their 
degree  of  merit  and  worth.  They  are  valu 
able  for  one  thing  particularly,  and  that  is  for 
showing  a  tendency  of  the  age.  It  is  a  com 
plex,  disintegrating  tendency,  for  each  one 
drives  (or  carries,  if  one  feels  favorably  in 
clined)  in  a  different  direction. 

There  is  something,  however,  that  is  com 
mon  to  all  of  them,  and  that  is  that  they  seek 
the  basic  fact  of  existence,  the  fundamental 
remedy  of  error  as  they  see  it.  The  typical 
Socialist  is  obsessed  with  the  idea  of  employing 


THE  IMPORT  OF  THE  SUPERFICIAL    13 

economic  power;  the  Christian  Scientist  is 
equally  obsessed  with  the  use  of  spiritual  pow 
er;  the  Physical  Culturist  is  dominated  by  the 
desire  to  create  physical  prowess ;  the  Futurist 
is  determined  to  discard  the  conventions  of  the 
past;  while  the  thorough-going  Anarchist 
would  let  everybody  do  just  about  as  he  pleases. 
One  might  be  a  follower  of  almost  all  the 
movements,  and  then  one  would  be  a  funda 
mentalist  with  a  vengeance. 

That  would  be  the  most  admirable  and  de 
sirable  type  of  human  being  were  it  not  for 
the  fact  that  there  are  elements  in  existence  of 
the  greatest  import  that  are  not  within  the 
scope  of  any  labelled  movement.  There  is  a 
certain  calm  thought  fulness  and  generally  pro 
gressive  tendency  common  to  all  genuine  and 
intelligent  people  that  is  neither  dominated  nor 
dominating.  It  simply  persists  aside  and  in 
spite  of  the  violent  outbursts  of  propagandists. 
Contemplation  is  one  of  its  considerable  ele 
ments  and  tolerance  is  one  of  its  chief  effects. 
The  lackeys  of  new  creeds  look  upon  it  as  a 
superficiality.  Its  possessors  are  not  spouting 
such  a  volume  of  water  as  the  more  radical 
whales  and  so  they  seem  to  be  sailing  in  shal- 


14  DEPRECIATIONS 

low  seas.  Really,  it  is  never  lack  of  courage 
that  keeps  them  on  the  surface:  it  requires 
sublime  courage  not  to  be  an  intellectual  diver 
to-day— the  epithets  of  the  seekers  of  the  bot 
tom  are  so  violent. 

What  strikes  one  most  forcibly  about  the 
habitues  of  causes  is  their  intellectual  ugliness. 
Generally  rasping,  their  thinking  on  all  sub 
jects  is  crude  and  perverted.  They  possess 
power,  but  it  is  the  power  of  a  very  lumbering 
elephant  who  can  not  manage  itself  when  it 
gets  into  steep  places.  If  the  road  is  blocked 
with  petty  opposition  it  can  knock  its  objectors 
over  and  proceed;  but  on  a  free  yet  rocky  path 
it  rolls  about  from  side  to  side  and  may  even 
turn  a  few  somersaults  on  the  way. 

The  man  whom  the  propagandists  deem  su 
perficial  is  saved  from  these  mildly  ungraceful 
proceedings.  He  is  commonly  supposed  to  do 
little  more  than  save  himself  in  this  fashion. 
In  reality  he  goes  down  the  ages  as  the  trib 
unal  before  whom  all  causes  and  all  movements 
and  all  propaganda  are  tried.  His  is  the  judg 
ment  that  will  not  perish.  In  art  he  furnishes 
taste  to  posterity.  In  science  he  supplies  the 
undiscredited  facts  of  the  future.  He  is  the 


THE  IMPORT  OF  THE  SUPERFICIAL    15 

backbone  of  the  generations;  and  while  diffi 
cult  to  characterize,  he  is  thoroughly  recog 
nizable,  and  decade  after  decade  he  goes  on 
being  born,  growing  in  thoughtfulness  and  tol 
erance  and  reserve  force,  and  coming  to  act  as 
the  great  creative  modifier  of  opposed  vio 
lences.  He  represents  the  most  attractive  type 
and  the  most  important,  and  through  him 
man's  lasting  and  permanent  progress  must 
come. 


LITTLE  ARNOLD  BENNETT 

Mr.  Bennett  is  always  positive  and  some 
times  right.  And  this  occasional  truthfulness 
is  one  of  his  chief  evils,  for  it  bolsters  his 
assurance  and  makes  his  positiveness  unshrink 
ing.  He  has  become  an  absolutist  par  excel 
lence,  and  his  contradictions  are  as  firm  as 
his  original  assertions.  For  example,  in 
How  to  Live  on  Twenty- four  Hours  a  Day, 
he  assures  us  that  "there  is  no  such  man  as  the 
average  man"  and  that  "every  man  and  every 
man's  case  is  special."  Yet  on  the  page  be 
yond  he  talks  of  "his"  typical  man  and  to  the 
average  he  addresses  himself  constantly.  The 
assumption  of  mediocrity  on  the  part  of  all 
men  is  the  first  essential  to  belief  in  his  preach 
ing.  In  a  particularly  unpregnant  epigram  we 
are  exhorted  to  attempt  a  petty  success  because 
"nothing  fails  like  failure."  Yet  who  but  the 
"average"  man  regards  a  small  accomplish 
ment  as  worthier  than  a  mighty  aspiration  ? 

And  this  is  the  book  of  which  we  learn  that 
"scarcely  any  of  the  comment  has  been  ad 
verse,"  excepting  some  objections  to  its  frivol 
ity  !  Why,  in  the  name  of  reason  and  original- 

17 


18  DEPRECIATIONS 

ity,  has  no  one  objected  to  its  seriousness — 
the  seriousness  with  which  are  uttered  the 
platitudes  of  the  ages,  uttered  with  apologies, 
it  is  true,  but  none  the  less  passionately? 
Here  is  a  man  in  the  twentieth  century  insen 
sible  to  the  fact  that  positive  assertions  become 
untrue  the  moment  they  are  made,  that  the  ab 
solute  is  unapproachable  and  that  middle-class 
finalities  feed  nothing  today  but  our  ruinous 
optimism. 

Of  the  great  gravities  of  life  he  is  unaware. 
He  is  all  for  the  day  to  day  efficiency.  He  ur 
ges  men  to  read  imaginative  poetry  in  the  same 
spirit  (and  paragraph)  as  he  recommends  Ep- 
ictetus.  Not  a  word  is  there  of  creative  ardor, 
not  a  suggestion  of  those  soul-stirring  cur 
rents  that  carry  men  to  supreme  accomplish 
ment.  Half  an  hour  of  "concentration." 
ninety  minutes  every  other  day  of  "serious 
reading" — these  are  his  offerings  to  spirits 
speeding  toward  eternity.  We  are  human  ma 
chines  capable  of  forming  literary  taste  and 
mastering  mental  efficiency.  There  is  the 
Alpha  and  Omega  of  the  Bennet  doctrine.  But 
some  of  us  are  without  the  taste  or  the  effi 
ciency,  and  these,  for  some  reason,  he  finds 


LITTLE  ARNOLD  BENNETT  19 

more  interesting  to  write  about;  so  we  have 
novels  and  plays  of  folk  not  possessed  of  his 
"pocket  philosophies." 

Imagine  if  they  were!  Conceive  The  Old 
Wives'  Tale  told  of  people  who  were  follow 
ing  the  concentration  exhortation !  Fewer  con 
temporaries  would  be  readers.  Yet  through 
out  this  best  of  his  books  and  down  from  it 
to  his  silliest  play,  we  find  the  same  calm  in 
sistence  on  monotony.  It  is  all  just  one  thing 
after  another — as  someone  described  life  it 
self,  forgetting  the  splashes  of  orange  that 
are  thrust  in  everywhere  on  the  gray-greens 
and  dull-blues  of  existence.  From  the  pinnacle 
of  our  last  hour,  life  may  look  like  an  undulat 
ing  plain,  but  we  experience  it  as  filled  with 
dark  caverns  and  dangerous  seas  and  vast, 
unassailable  mountains. 

And  so  Arnold  Bennett's  books  are  not  true 
for  us.  We  do  not  learn  from  their  calm  ac 
ceptance  of  the  bourgeois  virtues.  Their  sin 
cerity  is  obvious,  but  that  does  not  make  them 
true.  Yet  they  come  from  a  man  of  undoubted 
insight  and  imagination — insight  into  all  but 
the  deep,  blinding  forces  of  life,  imagination  of 
all  but  the  sweeping  passion  and  the  surging 


20  DEPRECIATIONS 

hates  and  fears  and  loves  of  men. 

The  novels  are  books  without  fehadows — 
and  therefore  without  highlights.  When 
anyone  dies  there  is  scarcely  a  ripple  of  dis 
comfort  among  the  living.  And  thus  it  is  in 
many  of  our  lives :  we  lose  father  and  mother 
and  sister  and  brother  and  countless  friends, 
and  we  surmount  every  loss  because  we  are 
left  dazed.  But  most  of  us  are  almost  always 
dazed.  We  do  not  know  why  we  are  here, 
where  we  are  going,  or  what  will  happen  to 
us  tomorrow,  and  we  have  quite  forgotten  the 
day  before  yesterday.  It  is  only  in  the  rarely 
vivid  moments  of  the  usual  person  that  he  re 
members  the  past,  or  senses  the  present  keenly, 
or  imagines  or  forsees  the  future.  Yet  these 
moments  have  been  the  substance  of  art  since 
writing  began,  and  some  great  artists  have  pic 
tured  them  immortally,  even  when  they  were 
happening  to  every  day  men  and  women.  So 
it  is  not  very  fairly  descriptive  to  announce 
Mr.  Bennett  as  a  remarkable  realist,  because 
he  skims  over  the  years  instead  of  dwelling  on 
the  quarter  hours.  The  years  whirl  by  in  a 
dream;  the  minutes  are  vivid  as  a  lightning 
flash.  Both  are  real  enough  indeed;  they  are 


LITTLE  ARNOLD  BENNETT  21 

opposite  methods  of  looking  at  the  same  mat 
ter.  In  a  measure,  they  represent  different 
ways  of  accepting  experience:  the  one,  the 
silent  soporific  method  of  the  mid- Victorian 
old-maid ;  the  other,  the  deep-seated,  vigorous, 
fearless  method  of  the  creator  of  all  times. 
From  a  point  of  God-like  aloofness,  neither 
may  be  the  greater,  but  art  has  always  con 
cerned  itself  with  the  latter,  and  to  the  pet 
ulant  spirits  of  this  age,  the  latter  must  be 
vastly  more  interesting. 

We  may  not  be  precisely  petulant  today.  That 
pictures  us  of  this  generation  as  distinctly  dis- 
agreeble  inheritors  of  this  generously  amus^ 
ing  planet.  But  we  are  deeply  stirred,  we  are 
turbulent,  the  thoughtful,  the  sensitive  among 
us.  Life  appears  to  us  at  many  points  as  a 
greatly  wasted  treasure,  and  we  hope  for  ex 
tensive  readjustments  that  may  bring  us  down 
to  a  better  basis  so  that  all  may  have  more  of 
the  fundamental  values.  We  are  uneasy 
among  the  fumblings  and  futilities  of  our  lead 
ers,  and  most  of  us  are  avid  for  suggestions 
from  that  salt  of  the  earth,  the  writers  whom 
men  acclaim  great. 

Therefore  it  is,  that  when  a  man  so  hailed  as 


22  DEPRECIATIONS 

Arnold  Bennett  appears  so  puerilely  uncog* 
nizant  of  the  trembling  forces  of  his  time,  the 
judicious  grieve. 

It  is  not  essential  that  one  should  be  a  pro- 
mulgator  of  programs  like  Wells  or  Shaw; 
that  is  admittedly  not  the  primary  function  of 
the  novelist.    There  are  greater  men  who  have 
to  offer  no  solutions,  men  like  Galsworthy  and 
Hardy  and  gentle  tingling  Meredith.     These 
are  fervent  with  subtlety  and  tremulous  with 
suggestion,  and  that  robs  them  of  appeal  to  a 
number  of  thousands.     No  doubt  the  man  of 
everyday  detests  no  single  factor  quite  so  much 
as  this  suggestiveness,  accompanied  by  any 
thing  that  is  subtle.     He  certainly  eschews  it 
conversationally  and  in  plays  it  dances  past  his 
ears.     It  seems  untruthful  to  him,  insincere. 
He  must  have  his  laugh  and  his  cry  labelled  for 
him — and  his  lecture,  too,  which  might  sen 
sibly    be    marked    "Poison — do    not    touch." 
When  Shaw  misleads  him  he  becomes  pro 
voked;   when   Galsworthy  sets  him  down  in 
doubt,   he  is   horrified.     But  with  his   good 
brother  Bennett  he  can  feel  at  home:  when  it's 
a  novel  he  buys  he  can  be  positive  that  he  will 
have  simple  story  from  beginning  to  end;  when 


LITTLE  ARNOLD  BENNETT  23 

it's  a  tract,  he  can  settle  down,  with  a  smack 
of  the  lips,  to  a  solid,  self-respect-creating  task, 
at  the  end  of  which  he  can  feel  quite  sure  that 
he  possesses  all  he  needs  to  know  about  the 
subject. 

Mr.  Bennett  knows  how  to  do  these  things, 
for  he  can  write.  He  knows  how  to  jgroup 
words  and  to  fetch  down  rapping  sentences. 
He  can  throw  the  simple-hearted  reader  into 
glorious  gusts  of  easily-explainable  laugh 
ter,  he  can  produce  the  tremor,  the  sigh,  the 
expectant  hush,  the  scurrying  ardor  to  be  at 
the  end.  That  is  because  he  has  a  great  and 
mighty  skill.  But  he  cannot  inspire  the 
thoughtful  and  he  cannot  enchain  the  reflec 
tive  and  he  cannot  lead  one  to  vast  heights 
of  emotion.  That  is  because  he  has  not  a  great 
and  mighty  soul. 

The  remaining  criticisms  follow  directly 
from  this  situation.  Mr.  Bennett's  skillfulness 
succeeds  in  massing  small  detail  and  still  pre 
serving  an  atmosphere  throughout  the  recital. 
His  soullessness  succeeds  in  making  that  recital 
a  remarkably  flat  and  uninspiring  affair.  Even 
so  well  executed  a  piece  of  humor  as  Buried 
Alive  is  more  refreshing  ten  pages  from  the 


24  DEPRECIATIONS 

beginning  than  as  many  lines  from  the  end. 
We  are  easily  sated  with  monotony,  even  when 
it  is  monotony  at  an  unusually  high  pitch.  And 
we  cannot  feed  our  minds  forever  on  the  blood 
less  characters  of  an  unimpassioned  brain. 
They  are  actual  enough,  assuredly,  these  whim 
sical  folk  of  the  Bennett  books,  except  for  their 
lack  of  the  sweeping  moments  that  make  a 
commonplace  existence  endurable,  and  that 
arise  when  passion  or  ambition  or  hatred  or 
some  other  feeling  overwhelms  the  petty  man. 
The  Bennett  business  folk  are  so  unbelievably 
petty  that  they  are  never  overwhelmed — or 
must  one  say  so  normal,  since  a  book  that  de 
scribes  the  ecstasies  of  life  is  inevitably  erotic 
or  neurotic  or  something  or  other  that  the  roy 
alty-paying  readers  do  not  like?  No,  for  good 
substantial  returns  trust  to  the  clammy  desex- 
ualized  character.  If  you  restrain  yourself  in 
this  regard  you  may  describe  the  smallest  func 
tion  of  your  individuals  with  the  most  complete 
waste  of  time  or  space  or  writing  materials, 
and  a  waiting  public  will  read.  But  the  thor 
oughly  human  is  thought  degenerate  in  Eng 
land  and  America  and  books  that  deal  with  it 
have  a  sudden  sale  that  dies  almost  at  once.  So 


LITTLE  ARNOLD  BENNETT  25 

if  you  are  an  efficient  business  man  of  litera 
ture,  you  avoid  such  disasters  by  being  as  true 
as  you  can  in  an  adjoining  field,  out  of  harm's 
way. 


ART  AND  AFFECTATION 

All  people  are  endowed  by  nature  with  cer 
tain  methods  and  mannerisms  of  speech  and 
movement.  The  conscious  alteration  of  these 
attributes  is  called  affectation.  The  term  is 
used,  however,  in  general  as  one  of  reproach 
and  so  >when  the  onlooker  approves  of  the  par 
ticular  method  of  distorting  the  observed  one's 
"natural"  characteristics,  the  latter  is  not  said 
to  be  affected.  Thus,  for  example,  if  a  man 
"naturally"  had  a  tendency  to  suck  his  thumb 
continually  in  public  or  to  scratch  the  sole  of  his 
left  foot,  or  to  kick  one  of  his  heels  high  in 
the  air  whenever  he  was  pleased,  and  if  this 
same  picturesque  individual  managed  to  rid 
himself  of  these  habits,  the  average  observer 
would  not  call  such  a  good  riddance  an  affecta 
tion.  If,  however,  a  man  has  a  harsh,  unpleas 
ant  voice  and  he  manages  to  turn  it  into  a 
modulated  tuneful  one,  or  if  he  finds  the  move 
ments  of  the  average  male  ungraceful  and  he 
manages  to  make  his  own  more  effective,  he  is 
immediately  liable  to  be  termed  an  affected 
person.  This  generally  happens  because  the 
other  folk  in  his  particular  community  are  un- 

27 


28  DEPRECIATIONS 

used  to  the  kind  of  voice  in  which  he  speaks 
or  to  the  type  of  movements  which  he  has 
trained  his  body  to  perform. 

It  is  perfectly  obvious  that  all  forms  of  affec 
tation  are  the  product  of  an  exercise  of  will 
power  and  their  growth  must  therefore  be  co 
ordinate  with  the  growth  of  self  control.  An 
uncontrolled  person  cannot  be  an  affected  one. 
Moreover,  affectation  requires  the  observation 
of  one's  own  mannerisms  and  the  comparison 
of  one's  own  with  other  people's,  together  with 
a  wholesome  self-disparagement  as  one  of 
the  results  of  the  comparison.  If  this  were 
not  so  the  person  would  never  be  affected,  for, 
failing  to  observe  the  superiority  of  any  other 
form  of  discourse  or  motion,  it  would  never  oc 
cur  to  him  to  approximate  his  own  to  any  ob 
served  form.  We  have,  then,  in  affectation  also 
an  exhibition  of  keen  desire  for  self -improve 
ment. 

With  the  practice  of  affectation  bolstered  by 
this  tremendous  galaxy  of  excellent  qualities 
essentially  connected  with  it,  it  seems  scarcely 
necessary  to  utter  any  further  defense,  but 
when  we  examine  the  process  a  little  further 
we  find  that  it  is  very  closely  bound  up 


ART  AND  AFFECTATION  29 

with  that  most  valuable  asset  of  human  exist 
ence,  the  genuine  expression  of  personality. 

Examine  the  authors  who  are  supposed  to 
be  affected:  men  like  Oscar  Wilde,  Bernard 
Shaw,  Gilbert  K.  Chesterton  and  George  Mere 
dith.  They  are  invariably  the  writers  with  a 
distinctly  personal  style.  They  are  in  each  case 
the  men  whose  work  accurately  and  profoundly 
reflects  their  own  individuality  and  whose  ex 
pression  and  ideas  are  in  complete  accord.  The 
"natural"  writers  are  practically  without  style 
and  nothing  but  their  supreme  genius  has  been 
able  to  succeed  in  spite  of  this  very  serious  de 
fect — in  fact,  we  never  hear  of  a  natural  writer 
unless  he  happens  to  be  a  great  genius  such  as 
Tolstoy,  Shakespeare,  Goethe  and  Homer.  The 
smaller  men  fall  by  the  wayside  unless  they 
turn  the  expression  of  their  thoughts  into  an 
individual  form,  and  to  the  extent  that  they  do 
this  they  are  supposed  to  be  affected.  The  same 
thing  is  true  in  graphic  art :  Turner,  Whistler 
and  Beardsley  being  affected,  and  Rembrandt, 
Hals,  and  Michael  Angelo  being  supreme 
enough  to  have  succeeded  without  a  deeply  self- 
expressive  style. 

Your  typical  fat-head  is  no  contemned  crea- 


30  DEPRECIATION 

ture  of  affectation.  He  is  far  too  lazily  self- 
satisfied  to  tax  himself  with  any  alteration  in 
his  natural  qualities.  Likewise  your  gratified 
matron,  who,  having  captured  her  legitimate 
prey,  settles  down  to  a  living  of  scandal-mon- 
gering,  rich  food  and  bridge  whist — she  is  not 
concerned  with  the  addition  to  her  personality, 
of  the  graces  and  kindlinesses  of  life.  Who,  in 
deed,  are  your  affected  poseurs,  but  the  most 
talented,  the  most  cultured,  sophisticated, 
thoughtful,  brilliant  and  suggestive  members 
of  your  acquaintance  ? 

It  requires  considerable  will  power  to  act  out 
an  affectation  to  its  inevitable  conclusion  of  be 
coming  an  authentic  piece  of  self-expression. 
Persuade  a  weakling'  to  attempt  this  and  he  will 
generally  fail,  but  his  will  power  will  improve 
under  the  effort.  Induce  a  thief  to  affect  hon 
esty  and  he  will  end  up  as  virtuous  as  you 
please.  "Become  what  thou  art"  is  an  ideal; 
"become  what  you  affect,"  a  reality. 

One  of  the  iconoclastic  onslaughts  of  this 
generation  must  be  directed  against  the  preju 
dice  of  the  unthinking  regarding  the  valuable 
and  very  social  art  of  affectation.  Without  this 
we  should  have  no  conscious  advances  in  per- 


ART  AND  AFFECTATION  31 

sonality,  no  growth  of  self-control.  We  must 
not  condemn  even  a  poor  exhibition,  or  not  any 
more  strongly  than  we  do  an  inferior  work  in 
painting  or  literature.  In  such  cases  our  func 
tion  as  appreciative  critics  is  to  demand  im 
provement.  We  are  all  in  a  state  of  "becom 
ing"  and  only  he  who  stagnates  can  be  com 
pletely  consistent  or  supremely  sincere. 


THE  SHADOWY  MR.  YEATS 

Slow  and  sure  seems  the  forte — or  may  one 
say  the  piano? — of  Mr.  Yeats.  On  the  instru 
ment  of  his  talent  the  sonatas  he  plays  are  soft 
and  melodious.  Compared  to  the  poetic  sym 
phonies  of  Masefield,  the  work  of  Mr.  Yeats 
is  that  of  a  veritable  MacDowell.  And  this  is 
high  praise;  for  MacDowell,  despite  his  cruel 
suppression  by  the  brutal  president  of  Colum 
bia,  composed  with  surety  and  success — that 
is,  with  beauty. 

That  Mr.  Yeats'  poems  have  something  near 
to  beauty  in  them  is  almost  the  first  thing  one 
feels  the  need  to  say  of  them ;  that  this  presence 
is  not  always  that  of  beauty  itself,  is  the  second. 
So  often  it  is  merely  the  atmosphere  of  beauty, 
the  hypnotic  influence  of  the  expectation  of 
beauty;  for  always  we  are  lead  by  Mr.  Yeats 
to  expect,  continually  and  everlastingly,  beauty 
of  the  first  order.  In  a  way,  his  claim  to  beauty 
is  like  the  claim  to  seriousnesss  of  a  writer  of 
ponderous  prose,  resounding  with  profound 
phrases,  some  book  of  pseudo-science  by  a 
man  who  knows  not  how  to  be  simple:  the 
matter  of  the  book  may  be  the  merest  bun- 

33 


34  DEPRECIATIONS 

combe  but  it  persuades  us  of  its  seriousness 
by  its  size  and  ponderosity.  So  Mr.  Yeats 
seems  always  to  be  telling  us,  as  we  turn  his 
pages,  "This  poem  or  this  play  is  going  to 
be  beautiful,  very,  very  beautiful,"  and  cer 
tainly  the  atmosphere  of  the  thing  invariably 
calls  up  beauty;  but,  examining  the  lines,  we 
find  that  those  actually  of  rare  and  wondrous 
quality  are  few. 

Perhaps  this  is  because  the  work  is  comatose. 
It  is,  at  least,  unstirring  in  a  high  degree.  There 
is  something  soporific  about  it,  and  although 
we  may  admit  that  bed  is  a  beatific  place,  we 
do  not  desire  our  poets  to  drive  us  there.  Nor 
is  this  sleepyness  to  be  explained  by  reference 
to  Mr.  Yeats'  obvious  mysticism.  Many  a  mys 
tic  besides  Jesus  has  been  a  stirrer  up  of  the 
spirit.  It  is,  perhaps,  because  the  slow-moving 
calm  of  religiosity  is  what  his  mind  requires. 
He  happens  to  be  a  Protestant  but  he  has  the 
soul  of  a  Catholic,  as  Chesterton,  who  happens 
to  acclaim  the  Catholic  belief,  is  temperamen 
tally  a  typical  Protestant. 

Mr.  Yeats'  mysticism  is  unalive.  He  writes 
of  life  as  if  it  were  death,  and  of  death 
also — wherefore  these  latter  descriptions  are 


THE  SHADOWY  MR.  YEATS  35 

strangely  adequate  and  ghastly.  But  man 
does  not  live  by  death  alone,  nor,  in 
deed,  at  all,  and  we  cannot  dwell  indefinitely 
in  a  world  of  ghosts  without  disturbing  our  di 
gestions.  Mr.  Wells  may  tell  us  all  he  pleases 
that  stomachic  difficulties  are  essential  to  good 
writing;  we  are  not  all  writers  (thank  the 
Lord!)  and  surely  some  part  of  Mr.  Yeats' 
readers  still  hope  for  something  from  him  be 
sides  death-smitten  heroes  possessed  of  strange, 
uncarnal  appetites,  maids  married  to  the  grave 
before  their  birth  on  the  scene,  old  hags  step 
ping  into  it,  and  wandering  children  adream  on 
eternity. 

Once  in  my  presence,  and  Mr.  Yeats',  a  min 
isterial  gentleman  expressed  this  hope  in  sup 
ple,  rounded  oratory  and,  was  verbally  trounced 
for  it  afterwards  in  Mr.  Yeats'  most  delicate 
and  biting  manner.  He  admired  the  Yeats 
poetry  exceedingly  but  he  wished  to  see  its  ap 
peal  widened,  and  he  proceeded  to  call  the  poet 
"onward  and  upward"  to  "greater  tasks  and 
grander  glories,"  if  I  recollect  his  phrasing. 
Mr.  Yeats  declined  with  thanks,  and  quite 
rightly.  The  things  of  death,  the  pale  purple 


36  DEPRECIATIONS 

things,  are  the  ones  that  he  is  able  to  do,  ex 
ceedingly  brilliantly  able,  and  he  is  adequate 
to  nothing  else.  It  is  not  so  very  important 
why  this  is  the  case.  It  may  be  due  to  his 
Irishness,  to  his  deep  relation  with  the  saddest 
people  on  the  globe,  who  are  credited,  ridicu 
lously,  with  being  a  nation  of  humorists,  be 
cause  they  possess  Shaw  and  Moore,  the  most 
serious  man  and  the  simplest  of  our  time.  It 
may  be  because  he  has  led  a  life  of  poetic  soli 
tude,  as  the  poets  of  old  are  supposed  to  have 
done,  instead  of  bowing  to  the  bowl  or  rah- 
whooing  with  the  mob.  It  may  be  because 
of  a  hundred  experiences,  associations  and 
ties,  or  lack  of  them:  but  aloof  from  life  he 
is  and  is  destined  to  remain ;  and  his  public  must 
take  him  with  that  understanding. 

That  they  do  take  him — a  certain  public — is 
very  evident.  That  this  public  is  not  so  large 
as  that  of  more  human  poets,  is  probable.  But 
shall  we  not  come  to  realize  some  time  that  the 
size  of  a  poet's  public,  in  the  present  state  of 
the  world,  is  influential  mainly  on  his  royalties, 
and  on  very  little  else?  Of  poets,  as  of  proph 
ets,  it  may  be  said  that  the  despised  of  our 
time  become  the  darlings  of  our  children's. 


THE  SHADOWY  MR.  YEATS  37 

And  Mr.  Kipling,  the  peerless  clanger  of  Brit- 
tania,  may  be  thought  cheap  and  insig 
nificant — except  as  a  story  writer — within 
fifty  years! 

It  is  slight  condemnation  to  declare  Mr. 
Yeats  a  man  without  a  message.  His  poems 
are  messageless,  and  in  his  prose  he  writes  big 
vaguenesses  on  little  concrete  things,  as  nat 
urally  as  some  philosophic  spirits  of  this  age 
are  writing  tiny  thoughts  upon  the  greatest 
questions  in  the  world.  But  Mr.  Yeats'  mind 
remains  at  large  whether  it  deals  with  the  Celtic 
Twilight  or  the  Celtic  theatre  or  the  twilight  of 
the  theatre — now  that  Synge  is  dead  and  Yeats 
is  over  forty!  His  is  a  mind  that  roams  the 
empyrean  no  matter  what  it  starts  for,  sprink 
ling  its  path  with  star-dust  as  it  goes,  but  never 
reaching  any  of  the  weightier  planets. 

Why,  indeed,  should  it  be  otherwise?  He 
can  never  conquer  the  cohorts  of  the  propa 
gandists  Shaw,  Wells  and  the  rest,  though  he 
may  have  a  part  of  the  following  of  the  idea- 
istically  elusive  Galsworthy.  At  least  he  has 
the  pleasure  of  knowing  that  many  of  the  thou 
sands  who  read  him  understand  and  enjoy;  and 
how  many  more  of  the  readers  of  H.  G. 


38  DEPRECIATIONS 

Wells  and  G.  B.  S.  enter  deeply  into  their 
ideas,  and  feel  and  think  and  seriously  an 
alyse?  The  true  public  of  every  man  is  a 
petty  thing  today — though  his  readers  number 
in  the  millions.  We  are  not  meaningful  to  the 
many.  Demos  remains  undaunted,  though  the 
first-rate  of  every  generation  give  their  lives  up 
trying  to  stifle  his  stupidity.  Shaw  laughs  his 
truth  out,  smeared  with  his  heart's  blood,  and 
the  multitude  laughs,  too,  because  it  is  all  so 
funny.  Yeats  sadly  smiles  his  ecstacy  upon  the 
world  and  a  few  quiver  while  the  many  yawn. 
George  Moore  attempted  to  do  poems  like 
Mr.  Yeats  and  failed,  because  he  was  too  clever 
and  too — mundane.  And  so  did  Lady  Greg 
ory  with  the  one-act  play.  These  failed  in  beau 
ty,  or  rather  the  elusive  atmosphere  suggesting 
beauty,  that  is  Mr.  Yeats'  chief  performance. 
Lady  Gregory  tells  all  of  a  thing,  and  therefore 
nothing;  Mr.  Yeats,  saying  nought  openly  or 
completely,  unbares  a  world  to  those  who  carry 
one  in  their  heads.  The  great  ones  have  done 
more  than  this:  they  have  made  a  world  out 
of  their  own  minds  and  left  it  to  us  to  play 
with  for  a  thousand  years:  our  Shakespeare 
and  Milton  and  Balzac  and  Hugo  and  Goethe; 


THE  SHADOWY  MR.  YEATS  39 

this  they  have  done.  Mr.  Yeats  is  leaving  us 
a  land  of  shadows,  visible  to  those  who  can  see 
in  the  quickening  twilight,  a  land  of  sweet, 
suggestive  figures,  and  that  is  all  that  Mr. 
Yeats  must  do. 


GEORGE  MOORE  THE  MUNDANE 

A  new  book  from  Mr.  Moore,  and  this  time 
—the  first,  in  many  years — a  book  of  criticism, 
as  well  as  a  novel,  convinces  us  more  firmly 
than  ever  that,  although  a  rolling  stone  gathers 
no  moss  it  often  achieves  a  most  attractive  pol 
ish.  A  gossipy  subtleness,  a  refinement  of  the 
commonplace  is  reached  in  "Hail  and  Farewell" 
that  is  quite  beyond  anything  that  even  the  au 
thor  of  "Memoirs  of  My  Dead  Life"  has  done. 

Once  more,  as  in  the  work  that  preceded 
this,  Mr.  Moore  exhibits  himself  as  the  British 
exemplar  of  the  French  realist-esthetes,  and 
once  more,  like  several  of  them,  he  is  guilty  of 
an  ethical  affirmation.  He  has  declared  for 
freedom  of  sex  discussion  and  liberty  of  sex 
relation.  This  is  his  one  departure  from  es- 
theticism.  This  is  his  one  contribution  to  the 
attitude  of  his  time. 

Mr.  Moore's  psychology  is  simple.  Devoid 
of  passion,  he  makes  sex  the  key-note  of  his 
thought  and  life.  Lovers  speak  not — they 
have  better  modes  of  expression.  Only  a  man 
of  weak  desires  is  qualified  to  voice  the  call  of 

41 


42  DEPRECIATIONS 

the  body.  Admirers  of  Mr.  Moore,  visiting 
Dublin — into  which  poor,  cool  city,  haunted 
by  both  Catholic  and  Protestant  restraint,  he 
has  retired  from  the  ravages  of  London  and 
Paris — are  astonished  to  see  his  gaunt  figure, 
topped  by  its  unattractive  visage  and  its  thin 
pale  hair.  They  wonder  if  this  is  the  Lover  of 
Orelay  and  the  confessor  of  England's  most  ar 
tistic  search  for  lust.  Where,  then — they  ask — 
are  the  writhing  red  lips  and  the  fire-flashing 
eyes  and  the  huge,  muscular  frame  of  perfect 
proportions  ?  They  have  never  existed  for  Mr. 
Moore,  any  more  than  for  such  earlier  attend 
ants  at  the  literary  confessional  as  Rousseau, 
Flaubert  or  Marie  Bashkirtseff.  Genuine  pas 
sion  does  not  write  about  itself.  It  is  only  the 
mild  but  ever  present  appetite  that  goads  to 
self-expression. 

Mr.  Moore  is  a  true  apostle  of  sex.  His 
religion,  music  and  the  rest  are  merely  con 
tributing  backgrounds.  As  far  as  the  expres 
sion  of  ideas  is  concerned,  sex  is  his  one 
strength,  his  one  originality,  his  one  sincerity. 
The  usual  artist  has  a  thousand  intellectual  an 
gles  from  which  emanate  as  many  momentary 


GEORGE  MOORE  THE  MUNDANE       43 

sincerities.  Every  affirmation  is  a  denial  of 
something  he  has  believed  or  something  he 
is  later  going  to  believe.  A  single  truth  that 
will  cover  all  things  at  all  times  (such  as  the 
philosopher  seeks  and  the  religious  posses 
ses)  is  impossible  of  retention  by  the  artistic 
mind.  Only  the  simple  can  be  sincere.  And 
with  these  Mr.  Moore  ought  always  to  have 
been  placed.  Despite  Mr.  Huneker,  he  has 
changed  but  little.  Sex  has  been  and  is  his  pur 
suit,  his  luxury,  his  stock  in  trade.  His  treat 
ment  of  the  topic  has  the  emphasis  of  the  mer 
chant  who  has  wares  to  sell.  But  all  this  is  the 
logical  result  of  the  self-realization  which  has 
been  the  purpose  and  indulgence  of  his  life. 

With  this  exception,  George  Moore  is  as  bar 
ren  of  ideas  as  Kipling  or  Pinero.  Only 
rarely  do  ripples  come  to  the  surface  of  his 
muddy  pools  of  thought.  For  him,  sex  is  the 
determining  factor  not  only — as  for  novelists 
generally — at  the  supreme  crises  of  life,  but  at 
every  moment  and  in  every  mood.  Passion, 
however,  is  not  his.  In  Mr.  Moore,  the  con 
scious  intellect — such  as  it  is — moves  in  a  cir 
cle.  His  mind  is  the  student  of  his  senses  and 
his  senses  are  the  motive  power  of  his  mind. 


44  DEPRECIATIONS 

Now  it  is,  ridiculously,  for  his  one  unim 
peachable  contribution  to  contemporary 
thought  that  Mr.  Moore  has  been  most  uni 
versally  condemned:  his  firm  and  fearless 
stand  for  the  only  freedom  that  he  values. 
And  surely  if  there  is  one  condition  in  the 
world  to-day  upon  the  rectification  of  which 
the  progress  of  mankind  inevitably  and  essen 
tially  depends,  it  is  the  vast  and  definite  in 
equality  between  man  and  woman,  with  all 
the  palpable  insincerities  and  inconsistencies 
which  this  entails. 

Mr,  Moore  has  observed  this  in  the  same 
way  that  he  has  noted  many  elements  of  mod 
ern  life.  He  has  not  thought  about  them. 
He  has  been  too  busy  getting  them  to  paper. 
So  gathering  a  host  of  facts  he  has  attained  to 
only  partial  truth.  Perhaps  he  has  seen,  but 
he  has  not  solved.  He  has  told,  not  taught. 
The  pages  in  his  books  depicting  the  attractive 
ness  and,  as  it  were,  the  morality  of  vice,  are 
products  of  neither  aspiring  art  nor  salutary 
science. 

In  a  contentious  "Apologia"  published  in  the 
American  edition  of  "Memoirs  of  My  Dead 


GEORGE  MOORE  TIME  MUNDANE       45 

Life/'  Mr.  Moore  defends  all  that  he  has  writ 
ten  on  the  subject  of  sex.  The  argument  is 
twofold :  first,  that  the  public  is  inconsistent  and 
inefficient  when  it  tries  to  deal  with  morals, 
since  it  determines  its  position  without  reason, 
and  learns  nothing  from  experience;  and 
secondly,  that  such  books  as  his  own,  however 
one  may  disapprove  of  them,  do  not  incite  to 
imitation  in  life  at  all — certainly  far  less  than 
the  tales  of  Boccaccio,  the  poems  of  Byron,  or 
the  plays  of  Shakespeare. 

This  contention  is  curiously  unreasonable, 
for  it  is  certainly  untrue  that  Boccaccio's 
fanciful  episodes  of  fourteenth  century  Floren 
tine  nobility,  taking  place  under  conditions 
never  present  in  contemporary  life,  or  Byron's 
satiric  poetry,  or  Shakespeare's  scenes,  sen 
sual  in  expression,  but  rarely  without  spirit 
ual  uplift — it  is  surely  untrue  that  these  are 
influential  over  readers'  lives.  Far  more  so 
are  the  realistic  reproductions  of  George 
Moore,  done  with  the  delicacy  of  semi-sincer 
ity,  unhampered  by  any  intensity  of  feeling. 
Mr.  Moore  has  learned  that  to  fascinate  read 
ers,  one  must  not  be  forceful. 


46  DEPRECIATIONS 

Yet  in  spite  of  his  evident  influence  on  the 
attitude  of  his  public,  Mr.  Moore  is  unlikely 
to  tear  the  world  from  its  Christian  virtues, 
for  he  is  insufficiently  positive  of  his  own  mor 
ality.  He  flounders  irrecoverably  in  the  "Apol 
ogia."  Of  his  two  logical  defenses  he  employs 
neither.  His  contention  should  naturally  and 
obviously  be  either  that  he  has  created  works 
of  art  founded  on  human  life  as  he  experienced 
it,  truthful,  but  altogether  free  of  any  propa 
gandist  intent;  or  he  should  argue  (and  such 
a  course  is  eminently  possible)  for  the  univer 
sal  adoption  of  the  moral  attitude  suggested  in 
his  stories,  on  the  ground  that  this  represents 
a  distinct  improvement  on  that  at  present  held 
by  a  majority  of  the  race.  It  is  certainly  more 
free,  more  fearless  and  more  frank  than  the 
American  coglomeration  of  blank,  bungling 
Comstockery  and  openly  gross  physical  over 
indulgence.  Instead  of  hitching  his  chariot 
to  such  a  planet,  and  making  his  course 
plain  as  the  sunlight,  Mr.  Moore  flies  away 
in  a  cloud  of  chatter  about  the  impossibility 
of  having  one  moral  code  for  all  people  or 
for  all  moments;  and  then,  at  the  suggestion 


GEORQE  MOORE  TjHE  MUNDANE       47 

of  a  quoted  correspondent,  makes  the  sudden 
discovery  that  he  has  been  distinctively  and 
powerfully  propagandist  without  knowing  it. 
Such  action  illustrates  a  degree  of  unconscious 
uncertainty  which  is  not  appropriate  even  in  the 
supposed  creative  artist.  Uncertainty  may 
develop  the  imagination;  but  one  should 
always  be  conscious — especially  of  the  things 
of  which  one  is  not  sure. 

George  Moore  is  simply  a  gunshot  at  the  con 
ventions  of  this  century.  Quite  well  he  sees 
that  soul  is  no  longer  possible  in  our  society; 
that  here  is  the  greatest  moral  deadness  in  the 
world;  that  neither  successful  nor  unsuccess 
ful,  rich  nor  poor,  learned  nor  ignorant,  are 
immune  from  its  devitalizing  effects.  Only 
those  in  revolt  can  remain  spiritually  pure. 
The  creature  of  convention  may  lead  a  blame 
less  life,  but  he  does  so  by  chance  or  necessity 
or  habit,  not  by  seeking  the  attainment  of  his 
own  truth.  He  lives  not  by  a  creed  of  his  mak 
ing  but  by  one  he  has  stolen  from  the  multi 
tude. 

Beyond  these  realizations  Mr.  Moore  does 
not  go.  Of  the  particular  he  has  much  to  say: 


48  DEPRECIATIONS 

of  our  whole  society,  absolutely  nothing.  Yet 
his  revolt  continues,  perhaps,  as  Mr.  Chesterton 
avers,  because  he  has  something  of  the  Irish 
man  in  him  still.  Bernard  Shaw's  suggestion 
in  the  appendix  to  Man  and  Superman,  of  a 
free  society  in  which  parenthood  should  be  sub 
sidized  by  the  state,  and  children  nurtured  as 
the  saviors  of  the  world  is  an  example  of  radi 
cal  yet  thoroughly  constructive  criticism  on 
this  subject.  In  not  one  of  his  sex  treatments, 
has  Mr.  Moore  made  such  a  constructive  analy 
sis.  He  is  interested  in  intellectual  develop 
ments,  as  in  emotional,  only  to  estheticize 
them.  Naturally  he  does  not  care  that  thought 
ful  contemporaries  see  in  the  approach  of  the 
sexes  to-day  a  solution  of  the  problem.  A 
new  universality  of  spirit  and  appreciation 
seems  to  be  the  keynote  of  that  20th  century 
development,  the  manly  woman — she  who  pos 
sesses  the  historical  manly  qualities  of  cour 
age,  firmness,  accomplishment  and  the  rest. 
The  highest  types  of  manhood  have  never  here 
tofore  been  matched  in  the  other  sex,  largely 
because  woman's  appreciation — and  there 
fore  her  ability — have  been  more  limited. 
Nothing  common  to  mankind  must  be  lacking  in 


GEORGE  MOORE  TflE  MUNDANE       49 

the  leader  of  men,  or  in  the  interpreter  of 
people;  each  must  be  largely  a  woman,  just  as 
each  must  be  much  of  the  student,  the  hermit, 
the  soldier,  the  policeman,  artist,  thief.  Being 
something  of  all  these,  he  is  in  no  wise  depen 
dent  upon  experiencing  the  situations  of  any  of 
them.  Universality  appears,  then,  as  an  inher 
ent  characteristic,  developed  by  all  experience, 
yet  subject  to  no  particular  experience.  It  is 
close  to  the  sympathy  of  the  mother,  and  to  the 
imagination  of  the  poet.  "All  great  men,"  said 
Thoreau,  "are  essentially  feminine." 

The  reverse  might  be  said  of  the  opposite 
sex. 

To-day  the  old  martial  conception  of  manli 
ness,  tho  altered  by  the  commercialism  of  a 
hundred  years,  still  holds  its  place.  Yet,  in 
the  truest,  highest  sense  of  the  term,  the  wom 
anly  man,  having  become  mentally  unsexed, 
having  lost  the  prejudices  and  limitations  of 
super-sex-consciousness,  attains  most  ^nearly 
to  the  universal.  Indeed,  the  typical  manly 
man  of  the  day  is  generally  without  the 
greater  manly  virtues,  while  our  most  talked- 
of  American,  Colonel  Roosevelt,  is  found  to 


50  DEPRECIATIONS 

possess  in  large  measure  the  essentially  femi 
nine  characteristics  of  intuition,  certainty  and 
simplicity.  That  positively  feminine  qualities 
were  present  in  Plato,  Caesar,  Shakespeare, 
Goethe,  Napoleon  and  Whitman  has  long  been 
recognized. 

Now  woman  is  soaring  toward  the  universal 
by  seeking  manliness.  Man  has  approached 
the  goal  more  rapidly  and  prevents  her  suc 
cess  by  chaining  her  to  the  particular.  But 
in  woman's  present  achievement  rest  many 
hopes.  Ridicule  cannot  turn  her  aside;  stig 
ma  is  ceasing  to  attach  to  her,  though  it  is  still 
as  easy  to  stigmatize  to-day  as  it  was  to  crucify 
two  thousand  years  ago.  Those  who  are  cham 
pioning  the  cause  of  the  sex  at  the  expense  of 
self  are  scoffed  at  just  as  those  of  long  ago 
were  slain  who  fought  men  for  the  sake  of 
man.  "It  is  so  easy  to  scoff."  And  then  those 
who  follow,  sorrow  for  the  ignorance  of  their 
forbears.  We  never  fail  to  honor  rapt  enthu 
siasts — of  other  ages. 

The  valid  objection  to  looking  to  the  ap 
proach  of  the  sexes  for  the  solution  of  the  tre 
mendous  sex  difficulty  of  society  lies  in  the 


GEORQE  MOORE  THE  MUNDANE       51 

fact  that  this  difficulty  depends  upon,  is  bound 
and  covered  by,  the  general  economic  condition 
of  mankind  to-day.  It  is  economic  inequality 
which  constitutes  the  chief  difference  between 
the  ragged,  night-wandering  employee  of  the 
sweat-shop  and  the  diamond-decked  daughter 
of  her  employer.  The  gradually  solidifying 
separation  of  rich  from  poor  is  therefore  the 
all-important  problem  of  this  generation,  and 
so  on  some  revision  of  the  economic  policy  of 
the  past  seems  to  depend  the  adjustment  of  sex 
— as  of  almost  everything  else. 

To  the  constructive  writing  on  this  subject 
Mr.  Moore,  of  course,  adds  nothing.  He  is  no 
more  constructive  than  inspired.  The  crea 
tive  portions  of  his  latest  book  are  descriptive 
rather  than  philosophical;  its  criticism  is  dis 
cursive,  not  creative.  There  is  much  about 
Mr.  Yeats,  Lady  Gregory,  and  the  Irish  Move 
ment;  about  travels  on  the  Continent;  and  it 
is  replete  with  the  usual  affaires.  But  all  of 
this  is  really  only  a  matter  of  clever  talk.  Mr. 
Moore  has  not,  in  short,  the  vision  of  the  pro 
phet,  the  artistry  of  the  poet,  or  the  depth  of 
the  philosopher.  Upon  the  unawakened  battle- 


52  DEPRECIATIONS 

field  of  sex,  amid  the  almost  universal  silence, 
he  blows  a  trumpet  blast  of  truth.  It  is  to  be 
hoped  some  others  may  begin  to  think  where 
he  has  merely  shouted. 

Again  and  again  we  hear  Mr.  Moore  termed 
a  "realist,"  but  in  him  we  find  a  realism  quite 
different  from  that  to  which  we  have  been  ac 
customed.  We  have  known  the  realism  of 
Zola  and  Brieux,  which  may  be  termed  "scien 
tific."  This  possesses  a  distinct  intellectual 
and  practical  value.  It  aims  fearless  and  force 
ful  blows  at  prejudice  and  convention.  It  con 
demns  the  practice  of  secrecy  concerning  recog 
nized  evils.  It  widens  the  knowledge  of  the 
public  on  topics  of  "unmentionable"  but  su 
premely  important  character.  We  have  seen 
the  realism  of  Wells  and  Galsworthy,  which 
aims  not  only  at  special  cures,  but  also  carries 
with  it  an  unmistakeable  suggestion  of  general 
solution  which  might  prompt  the  use  of  "spir 
itual"  in  its  characterization.  Without  one  or 
the  other  element  no  work  of  realistic  art  can 
be  very  much  more  than  an  art  object.  This 
is  what  Mr.  Moore's  creations  really  are. 
Their  realism,  being  neither  scientific  nor  spir- 


GEORGE  MOORE  THE  MUNDANE        53 

itual,  is  what,  for  want  of  a  better  name,  we 
must  call  "esthetic."  They  aim  at  a  candid 
reproduction  of  the  picturesque. 

In  Modern  Painting,  Mr.  Moore's  most  pop 
ular  critical  work,  he  pleads  guilty  to  the  grave 
offense  of  having  "suggested  that  a  work  of 
art  .  .  .  may  influence  a  man's  moral 
conduct."  He  then,  as  in  the  American  preface 
already  mentioned,  proceeds  upon  a  forceful 
denial  of  this  thesis.  Such  denials  constitute 
one  of  Mr.  Moore's  chief  critical  contentions. 
They  are  his  only  defense  of  his  frank  treat 
ment  of  the  sex  question.  Yet,  of  course, 
books  do  influence  life — often  more  than  life 
itself.  Reading  "The  Lovers  of  Orelay"  may 
have  perturbed  the  charity  secretary,  whom 
Mr.  Moore  quotes,  more  than  meeting  with 
just  such  an  experience  in  life  would  have  done. 
Even  personally  knowing  Doris  could  not  have 
affected  this  pious  man  so  strongly.  Her  at 
traction  would  probably  have  been  merely  an 
object  of  philosophical  consideration. 

Mr.  Moore  is  said  to  have  at  moments  some 
what  the  same  directness  and  virility  of  attack 
that  have  spread  the  fame  of  Shaw,  but  in 


54  DEPRECIATION 

"Ave"— which  deals  with  some  matter  also 
treated  by  the  latter — the  onslaughts  are  only 
comparable  with  those  of  G.  B.  S.  as  the  ex 
ecution  of  a  sheet  of  sandpaper  is  comparable 
with  that  of  a  plane;  Mr.  Shaw  shaves  his 
chunk  off  with  the  hardest  and  surest  of  in 
tellectual  metal;  Mr.  Moore  covers  the  surface 
more  smoothly,  but  he  is  wavering  and  rasping. 
Only  on  sex  is  he  sympathetically  attuned, 
only  on  sex  is  he  temperamentally  effective 
and  sincere. 

In  the  last  analysis  it  makes  little  difference 
whether  a  writer  elects  to  be  sincere  or  make 
a  living.  He  cannot  really  put  to  paper  more 
or  less  than  his  own  soul.  It  is  by  losing  his 
soul,  or  giving  it,  that  the  author  achieves  him 
self  ultimately.  And  this  out-pouring  of  his 
greatest  possession  is  his  one  essential  ability. 
Indeed,  of  what  avail  is  it  to  him  if  he  gain 
the  whole  world,  and  cannot  lose  his  own 
soul? 

Mr.  Moore  has  succeeded  in  serving  us  his 
soul,  but  our  appetite  remains  unsatisfied.  It 
is  pleasing  food,  but  slight,  sterile,  insignifi 
cant.  It  is  a  soul  that  becomes  finally  neither 


GEORGE  MOORE  THE  MUNDANE        55 

startling  nor  shocking.  It  merely  succeeds  in 
telling  us  the  expected  in  a  whisper  and  shout 
ing  the  subtle  into  our  ear  drums.  That  is  what 
happens  in  "Hail  and  Farewell,"  as  in  every 
one  of  his  score  of  other  books. 

From  another  angle  the  author  may  remind 
us  of  the  chariot-race  stage  horses,  madly  dash 
ing  onward  without  ever  arriving  anywhere. 
Vigor  and  combativeness  we  are  given  in 
plenty,  but  when  the  time  comes  for  the  curtain 
here  they  are,  horses,  chariot,  and  driver,  just 
where  they  were  at  the  beginning — or  a  week 
before  that.  The  rehearsals  have  been  carried 
to  perfection;  the  scenery  flits  by,  changing 
momently;  but  the  struggle  is  stagecraft,  even 
if  horses  and  men  are  actual.  We  realize  that 
if  we  return  the  following  day  we  shall  see  pre 
cisely  the  same  performance.  The  scene  shifts, 
but  the  spirit  persists. 

It  is  in  a  spirit  cooled  by  artistry  and  un- 
warmed  by  inspiration,  that  Mr.  Moore  has 
done  his  last  and  longest  work.  In  a  sense,  it 
is  nevertheless,  adequate,  for  it  is  rounded  and 
complete.  Serious  flaws  in  taste  or  construc 
tion,  such  as  those  of  which  Shakespeare  and 


56  DEPRECIATIONS 

Dickens  have  been  guilty,   are  not   for  Mr. 
Moore.    Bordering  on  the  unblemished,  he  is 
close  to  insipidity.     For  some  as  yet  undis 
covered  reason,  adequacy  is  seldom  inspired, 
and  perfection  never  sublime.    Those  who  have 
tortured  us  with  the  divine  pangs  of  terrific 
beauty  are  often  those  who,  at  moments,  stir 
in  us  a  sense  of  incongruity  and  sometimes 
even  of  disgust.    Such  is  the  feeling  caused  by 
all  the  coarser  scenes  in  Shakespeare's  sweet 
est   comedies    following  close   upon   episodes 
fragrant  with  old-world  fancies,  or   fraught 
with  the  shattering  glory  of  immortal  lines. 
No  one  in  England  can  touch  the  estheticism 
of  sex  with  so  delicate  and  yet  unswerving  a 
hand  as  Mr.  Moore.     Yet  are  there  any  who 
find  in  his  work  the  towering  temperament, 
the    dominating    desire    or    the    inexplicable 
breath-catching  beauty  of  the  master  crafts 
man? 

He  has,  indeed,  led  a  vivid  existence.  He 
has  ^gone  ahead,  unconquered,  undismayed, 
writing  wretched  poetry,  poor  essays,  passable 
novels,  puerile  plays  and  now  he  starts  to  gos 
sip  his  way  faultlessly  into  oblivion.  He  has 


GEORGE  MOORE  THE  MUNDANE        57 

lived,  a  varietist,  in  art  as  in  sex;  and  in  a 
certain  sense,  variety  is  the  price  of  life.  But 
where  in  all  his  sure  and  subtle  art,  where  is 
the  whirl  of  summitless  spirit?  Where  are 
the  words  shall  tremble  on  the  lips  of  time? 


THE  FETICH  OF  SINCERITY 

Most  sincerity  is  the  supreme  form  of  sel 
fishness.  It  is  self  culture  at  the  expense  of 
that  kindly  consideration  for  others,  which  is 
certainly  a  first  principle  of  civilized  beings, 
and  to  which  occasional  lying  is  essential.  The 
virtue  of  truth  is  greatly  like  that  of  chastity; 
either  of  them,  carried  to  excess,  becomes  a 
vice. 

The  only  person  to  whom  one  should  be 
excessively  truthful  is  one's  self,  and  one  never 
accomplishes  that  because  one's  self  is  always 
the  easiest  to  fool.  If  Polonius  had  been 
really  wise  he  might  have  advised  his  son,  To 
thine  own  self  be  true — and  thou  canst  then  be 
false  to  any  man  with  impunity. 

We  all  lie,  but  we  become  weakened  and  de 
bauched  in  proportion  to  the  extent  of  our 
unconscious  lying.  And  the  punishment  of 
most  liars  is  not,  as  G.  B.  S.  avers,  that  they 
cannot  believe  anyone  else,  but  that  they  come, 
frequently,  to  believe  themselves.  Then  they 
cease  being  creative  artists  and  must  be  rele 
gated  to  the  region  of  the  vicious.  For  lying, 

59 


60  DEPRECIATIONS 

itself,  is  assuredly,  as  Oscar  Wilde  proclaimed, 
an  art,  and  creative  in  the  highest  sense.  Only 
God  can  control  facts,  but  man  becomes  God 
like  in  his  control  of  the  recital  of  them.  He  is 
free  in  every  case  to  assert  the  affirmative  or 
the  negative — and  how  little  of  such  freedom 
we  have  on  this  earth ! 

But  we  must  be  brave  and  hearty  in  our 
lying,  for  this,  like  other  virtues,  becomes  petty 
when  it  is  practiced  by  cowards.  Just  so  a 
woman  must  be  chaste  with  an  "air"  if  she  is 
to  be  respected  by  the  discerning  and  she  may 
be  unchaste  like  a  coward  and  still  be  quite 
ridiculously  respectable. 

Either  truth  or  lying  must  be  justified  by  the 
circumstances.  Both  cannot  be  right  for  the 
same  case,  and  we  must  develop  a  keen  dis 
crimination  that  will  tell  us  which  is  best  on 
each  occasion. 

And  insincerity  has  still  another  magnificent 
reason  for  being,  because  although  it  is  a  fact 
that  very  few  of  us  can  tell  ourselves  the  truth, 
we  are  all  madly  anxious  to  obtain  the  truth 
from  others.  This  leads  us  to  demand  con 
fidences  to  which  we  are  not  entitled,  and 
causes  us  to  exact  information  of  no  value  to 


THE  FETICH  OF  SINCERITY  61 

us  that  we  secure  for  the  simple  satisfaction 
of  our  curiosity  .  We  crave  to  find  out  about 
our  friends  and  their  friends  and  even  the  peo 
ple  we  do  not  know,  and  all  their  actions  and 
thoughts,  collectively  or  individually;  in  fact, 
most  of  us  are  immensely  curious  about  nearly 
everything. 

Now  this  curiosity  is  an  excellent  attribute, 
from  the  subjective  standpoint;  it  assures  us 
that  we  are  mentally  alive.  But  from  the 
standpoint  of  others  it  is  just  as  certainly  a 
very  dangerous  and  disagreeable  matter.  So 
we  are  forced  to  get  at  all  the  truth  we  can, 
while  giving  out  only  so  much  as  we  please; 
and  there  is  no  way  except  by  being  frequently 
untruthful  that  we  can  win  at  the  game. 

All  these  conditions  are  extremely  obvious. 
We  should  every  one  of  us  be  admitting  them 
every  day,  were  it  not  that  sincerity  has  be 
come  one  of  the  most  imposing  fetiches  of  the 
time.  It  is  like  the  fixed  belief  that  a  married 
woman  must  be  incapable  of  seriously  liking 
any  man  but  her  husband,  which  persists  in 
spite  of  the  fact  that  all  but  the  most  naive  of 
us  know  that  not  one  in  a  hundred  is  men 
tally  faithful  throughout  a  lifetime.  And  how 


62  DEPRECIATIONS 

disgustingly  unimaginative  we  should  become 
if  we  were  never  illicitly  attracted,  and  if  we 
remained  continuously  sincere !  Stupidity 
would  reign  supreme  and  brilliance  be  no  more. 

And  if,  indeed,  despite  all  arguments,  we 
did  determine  to  be  unequivocally  truthful, 
we  should  immediately  find  that  we  had  de 
cided  upon  a  course  impossible  of  fulfillment. 
Not  only  are  there  a  thousand  nuances  every 
day,  in  every  mind  worthy  the  name,  that  can 
not  be  couched  in  words,  but  there  are  com 
pletely  developed  thoughts  that  thrust  them 
selves  upon  one  in  the  midst  of  talk,  the  ex 
pression  of  which  is  rendered  inapropriate  and 
misleading  by  the  context  of  the  conversation. 
There  are  modifying  ideas  that  come  forward 
w^hile  one  is  phrasing  a  thought  that  would 
occupy  countless  hours  if  all  of  them  were 
handled  adequately.  The  moment  we  say  a 
thing  we  begin  to  alter  our  viewpoint  toward 
it,  and  our  speech  is  quite  incapable  of  keeping 
up  with  these  alterations. 

So  there  can  be  no  complete  sincerity,  how 
ever  we  may  wish  for  it,  even  between  two 
of  the  most  intensely  intimate  companions. 


THE  FETICH  OF  SINCERITY  63 

Some  thoughts  are  carelessly  tossed  aside,  oth 
ers  are  consciously  suppressed,  still  others  come 
forth  into  words  deformed  and  scarcely  to  be 
recognized.  And  perhaps  it  is  just  as  well 
that  this  is  so,  for  few  as  there  are  who  can 
bear  the  truth  from  their  own  minds,  still  fewer 
are  there  who  could  survive  if  truth  were  al 
ways  thrust  upon  them  by  their  neighbors. 
Therefore,  all  hail  to  the  kindly  insincerities 
consciously  chosen  by  self-reliant  spirits  for 
the  welfare  of  their  weaker  brothers! 


GILBERT  K.  CHESTERTON:  DEFEND 
ER  OF  THE  DISCARDED 

It  is  never  too  late  to  mend,  but  it  is  very 
often  far  too  late  to  break — especially  when 
one  is  dealing  with  the  reputation  of  a  su 
premely  successful  journalist.  This  is  more 
or  less  as  it  should  be,  for  the  fact  that  a 
man's  work  succeeds  is  not  always  a  reliable 
evidence  of  its  failure.  But  neither  does  it 
follow  that  because  one  has  succeeded  he  has 
met  with  genuine  success,  and  no  successful 
man  has  failed  more  lamentably  at  certain 
points  than  Mr.  G.  K.  Chesterton. 

Yet  in  spite  of  his  failures  (and  of  his  suc 
cess)  many  things  can  be  said  in  his  favor. 
His  critical  works  have  been  justly  and,  on 
the  whole,  adequately  praised  as  masterpieces 
of  suggestive  writing,  seductive  in  style  and 
replete  with  varied  and  spectacular  allusions. 
That  they  are  only  at  moments  constructive  (in 
the  sense  of  flashing  before  us  living  charac 
ters)  is  more  than  compensated  for  by  their 
splendor  of  insinuation.  Chesterton  was  as 
certain  to  fail  in  presenting  a  complete  and 
inevitable  Shaw  as  was  Shaw  himself  in  ex- 


65 


66  DEPRECIATIONS 

hibiting  a  true  and  virile  Ibsen.  For  just  as 
only  a  very  superficial  man  can  be  thoroughly 
conscious  of  his  own  depths,  so  only  a  man 
of  tremendous  depths  is  able  to  realize  an 
other's  superficialities.  Chesterton  writes 
about  Shaw  as  if  every  mood  and  motion  in 
his  work  could  be  resolved  upon  the  deepest 
concepts  of  the  latter's  philosophy;  and  Shaw 
would  have  us  seriously  believe  that  Ibsen  pos 
sessed  some  fundamental  faith  to  which  he  al 
ways  bore  allegiance.  Every  great  creator  is 
the  creature  of  his  fancy  and  any  criticism 
that  attempts  to  make  genius  perfectly  consis 
tent  must  fail  to  achieve  its  aim.  Chesterton's 
own  greatest  shortcomings  might  be  said  to  be 
results  of  his  almost  absolute  consistency. 

Not  that  his  point  of  view  has  been  always 
the  same.  In  The  Wild  Knight,  his  early  and 
only  book  of  poems,  is  found  a  standpoint  ut 
terly  dissimilar,  to  that  of  anything  since  ex 
cept,  perhaps,  The  Defendant,  his  first  volume 
of  essays,  which  may  be  regarded  as  the  pro 
duction  of  a  transition  period.  With  the  pub 
lication  of  Heretics  his  ideas  begin  to  crystal 
lize,  and  here  is  illustrated  one  of  his  saddest 


GILBERT  K.  CHESTERTON  67 

and  most  signal  failures.  For  as  he  becomes 
surer  of  himself,  as  the  crystalline  clearness 
is  achieved,  the  hardness  and  just  a  touch  of 
the  coldness  of  crystal  are  noticeable.  The 
Defendant  is  the  best  of  his  treatises;  'the 
Dickens,  of  his  biographies;  and  The  Napoleon 
of  Netting  Hill  of  his  novels.  His  more  re 
cent  writings  are  all,  in  the  attributes  which 
have  won  him  distinction,  inferior. 

Application  of  Mr.  Chesterton's  analysis  of 
the  Irishman,  who,  he  believes,  "could  see  with 
one  eye  that  a  dream  was  inspiring,  bewitching, 
or  sublime,  and  with  the  other  eye  that  after 
all  it  was  only  a  dream,"  might  readily  be 
made  to  himself.  It  is  because  Chesterton 
never  utterly  loses  himself,  because  his  con 
sciousness  is  always  perfect,  because  his  dream 
never  for  an  instant  seems  to  become  his  re 
ality,  that  he  can  never  meet  with  wide  and 
vital  acceptance.  His  "mind  distinguishes  be 
tween  life  and  literature/'  and  as  a  consequence 
his  literature  is  without  influence  over  others' 
lives.  Mankind  is  swayed  and  steadied  by  the 
great  half -thinkers  whose  hearts  are  larger 
than  their  heads.  Perhaps  the  greatest  of  all 
Mr.  Chesterton's  faults  is  the  domination  of 


68  DEPRECIATIONS 

his  mind.     Inspiration  and  self-consciousness 
are  impossible  bed-fellows. 

But  self-consciousness,  far  from  being-  op 
posed,  is  surely  essential  to  the  gentle  art  of 
making  epigrams.  Chesterton  tells  us  that 
Shaw's  wit  "is  never  a  weakness;  therefore 
it  is  never  a  sense  of  humor."  This  charac 
teristic  is  the  very  essence  of  cleverness,  that 
twentieth  century  development,  mothered  by 
Oscar  Wilde,  in  which  Chesterton  himself 
abounds.  Cleverness  is  always  fundamentally 
serious ;  it  has  always  a  conscious  end.  Clever 
ness  is  not  the  external  exhibition  of  a  mood; 
it  is  intellectually  created  to  produce  a  mood. 
This  is  what  serves  to  differentiate  it  finally 
from  either  wit  or  humor. 

Both  of  these  latter  may  be,  indeed  gener 
ally  are,  a  matter  of  natural  instinct.  Seldom 
can  they  be  consciously  developed.  They  burst 
full-blown,  from  a  page  of  serious  writing,  or 
leap,  triumphant  and  irresistible,  into  an  un 
welcoming  discourse.  Cleverness,  on  the  other 
hand,  is  almost  altogether  a  matter  of  develop 
ment,  of  careful  and  tireless  training,  the 
product  of  watchful  nurture.  It  depends  for 
its  very  being  upon  absolute  and  unwavering 


GILBERT  K.  CHESTERTON  69 

self -consciousness.  To  be  clever  one  must  al 
ways  be  intellectually  on  the  spot.  To  drift 
into  the  realm  of  contemplation  is  fatal;  to 
dream  is  to  sign  the  death-warrant  of  clever 
writing  or  conversation.  Cleverness,  there 
fore,  can  never  partake  of  either  the  depths 
of  thought  or  the  heights  of  inspiration.  This 
is  the  quality  of  which  Chesterton  is  the  great 
est  protagonist,  and  one  of  the  most  effective 
employers,  in  the  world.  From  this  aspect,  his 
work  is  important,  but  imperfect;  we  hear  the 
clanging  of  his  mental  machinery  on  almost 
every  page.  Were  the  product  perfect,  there 
would  be  a  running  ripple  of  laughter  from 
beginning  to  end. 

Realizing  cleverness  to  be  a  conscious  ac 
complishment,  we  naturally  tend  to  expect 
some  ulterior  motive  for  which  it  exists.  As 
employed  by  Shaw  it  persuades  an  unusually 
large  public  to  accept  for  consideration  a  very 
serious  thinker  who,  without  it,  would  be  re 
stricted  to  the  attention  of  the  few.  In  the 
work  of  this  writer  we  find  a  complete  and 
consistent  point  of  view  toward  everything  in 
the  world,  and  out  of  it.  It  is  of  the  first  im 
portance  to  determine  whether  any  such  stand- 


70  DEPRECIATIONS 

point  can  be  found  in  the  work  of  Mr.  Ches 
terton. 

A  review,  read  recently,  makes  the  custo 
mary  assumption  and  may  serve  as  an  illu 
minating  example. 

"Of  course  this  is  much  more  than  a  novel"; 
says  the  confident  reviewer;  "and  while  we  are 
infinitely  amused  over  the  adventures  of  Mr. 
Chesterton's  characters,  at  the  same  time  we 
are  aware  that  the  author  means  to  drive  home 
some  telling  truths  in  regard  to  our  ideals  and 
practices." 

This  is  exactly  what  critics  are  always  say 
ing  about  Mr.  Chesterton.  They  invariably 
assure  us  of  the  depth  of  meaning  underlying 
his  frivolity.  What  this  is,  they  make  not  the 
slightest  pretence  to  tell  us.  By  nature  the 
solemn  critic  feels  it  incumbent  upon  him  to 
apologize  for  cleverness  by  reference  to  some 
fundamental  philosophy.  In  the  case  of  Mr. 
Chesterton  no  commentator  (with  the  excep 
tion  of  his  anonymous  biographer)  has  made 
even  the  slightest  effort  to  investigate  his  con 
cepts,  and  when  we  turn  to  the  writings  them 
selves  we  find  that  he  has  made  his  ideas  far 
from  evident. 


GILBERT  K.  CHESTERTON  71 

One  seemingly  consistent  point  of  view  we 
do  find  in  all  his  recent  work.     This,  as  has 
been  said,  was  not  in  the  least  apparent  in  The 
Wild  Knight,  but  it  appears  more  or  less  in 
everything  else  up  to  Heretics,  and  very  posi 
tively  in  everything  since.     This  is  the  spirit 
of  reaction,  reaction  against  everything  that 
is  new  or  modern  or  "progressive" — he  defines 
the  word  somewhere  to  include  all  those  who 
believe  in  the  possibility  of  mankind  attaining 
genuine  happiness  through  the  spread  of  edu 
cation  and  reform — but  to  nothing  very  def 
inite  or  particular.    He  evinces,  indeed,  a  lean 
ing  toward  Catholicism,  but  his  standpoint  is 
scarcely  that  of   a   Catholic.      "Back   to   re 
ligion."   cries   Chesterton,   quite  unaffectedly, 
and  with  great  gusto,  not  for  any  especial  rea 
son,  not  because  it  is  true,  but  because  religion 
and  humility  are  good  for  soul  and  body.    Be 
lieve  in  God,  because  this  will  make  you  fat. 
Omit  modernity  from  your  intellectual  diet  and 
you  will  remain  untroubled  by  mental  indiges 
tion.     "If   Christianity  makes  a  man  happy 
while  his  legs  are  being  eaten  by  a  lion/5  he 
speculates,  "might  it  not  make  me  happy  while 
my  legs  are  still  attached  to  me  and  walking 


72  DEPRECIATIONS 

down  the  street?"  This  is  as  close  to  Mr. 
Chesterton's  spiritual  standpoint  as  he  has  per 
mitted  us  to  come.  In  the  same  way,  he  has 
written  many  anti-liberal  manifestoes,  yet  his 
patrio-bellum  beliefs  bear  no  direct  relation  to 
the  creed  of  either  the  Socialist  or  the  Tory. 
Is  he,  then,  what  he  is  continually  proclaim 
ing-  himself,  an  original  and  constructive  phil 
osopher?  In  the  preface  to  Heretics  (and  in 
half-a-dozen  places  besides)  he  declares:  "The 
most  practical  and  important  thing  about  a  man 
is  still  his  view  of  the  universe."  Apparently 
he  either  regards  the  possession  of  a  view  as 
far  more  essential  than  the  expression  of  it, 
or  else  he  considers  the  declaration  that  the 
universe  is  good  or  the  universe  is  bad  as  a 
fair  philosophic  statement.  To  believe  that 
everything  is  going  right,  or  everything  is  go 
ing  wrong,  that  things  have  been  better  than 
they  are,  or  are  bound  to  be  so  in  the  long  run 
— this,  if  we  may  judge  from  the  writings  of 
G.  K.  Chesterton,  is  to  be  a  philosopher.  Any 
fundamental  relation  between  ideas,  any  gen 
uine  system  such  as  can  be  traced  in  the  work 
of  any  of  those  whom  mistaken  mankind  has 
in  the  past  regarded  as  philosophers,  seems,  so 


GILBERT  K.  CHESTERTON  73 

far  as  can  be  seen,  entirely  superfluous  to  this 
thinker.  He  contents  himself  with  stroking  the 
surface  of  a  hundred  pools  of  thought  and 
sending  up  an  occasional  jetty  of  water  to  an 
unexpected,  if  futile  height,  thus  astonishing 
both  those  whose  intention  it  is  to  bathe 
placidly  and  those  who  have  come  to  dive  to 
the  depths.  Thus  he  places  himself  irrevo 
cably  among  the  clever  critics  and  luminous 
litterateurs,  and  compels  all  equitable  judg 
ment  of  his  work  to  be  based  upon  its  imme 
diate  artistic  or  utilitarian  value. 

A  hasty  examination  of  any  hundred  of  the 
disconnected,  unrelated  commonplaces  which 
he  has  so  successfully  phrased,  must  prove 
convincingly  that  Chesterton  is  no  philosopher. 
As  an  artist  in  journalism  his  now  incisive, 
and  now  buffeting  style,  and  his  pugnacious 
and  dominating  method,  are,  of  course,  admir 
able.  As  a  moralist,  his  single  interesting  con 
tribution  is  his  violent  and  (recently)  consis 
tent  opposition  to  progress  (as  defined  above) 
in  all  its  manifestations.  This  viewpoint, 
whatever  may  have  been  his  original  reasons 
for  its  adoption,  seems  to  have  become  really 
his  own,  and  it  has  brought  him  the  firm  and 


74  DEPRECIATIONS 

genuine  suport  of  very  few  who  really  know 
what  it  is.  That  mankind  is  moving  forward 
to  the  sound  of  mighty,  ever  more  inspiring- 
music,  is  an  almost  undoubted  fact.  The  ar 
guments  seem  too  conclusive  to  meet  with  rejec 
tion  by  any  one  less  determined  to  be  different 
than  G.  K.  Chesterton. 

Mr.  Chesterton  hails  Plato  as  the  most 
Shawesque  of  all  men,  and  sees  therefore  no 
advance  since  his  time.  But  there  are  a  mil 
lion  men  closer  to  Plato  in  the  world  to-day 
than  were  a  thousand  in  his  lifetime.  Man 
kind  has  not  risen  to  the  spirituality  of  Tesus, 
but  it  can  not  be  doubted  that  it  is  nearer  to  it 
to-day  than  ever.  He,  like  every  constructive 
radical,  believed  in  man  rather  than  men.  He 
found  himself  surrounded  by  Scribes  and 
Pharisees,  but  he  saw  beyond,  behind  the 
shadow  of  the  centuries,  a  race  that  would  be 
noble  and  pure  and  true.  This  very  attitude 
in  "progressives"  to-day  gives  birth  to  Ches 
terton's  chief  criticism  of  them.  He  is  that 
most  perfect  example  of  narrow-sightedness, 
the  mystic  who  attempts  to  glorify  the  obvi 
ously  unsatisfactory  past.  He  imagines  him- 


GILBERT  K.  CHESTERTON  75 

self  (and  us)  confronted  by  but  one  choice: 
that  between  the  mysticism  of  religion  and  the 
materialism  of  science — failing  to  realize  that 
the  belief  in  "progress"  is  the  most  mystic 
of  all  religions,  quite  aside  from  its  appeal  to 
reason.  But  then,  the  retention  of  the  reason 
ing  faculty  restrains  one's  pleasure  in  reading 
Chesterton.  It  is  possible  to  see  too  clearly. 
As  has  been  said  of  Nietzsche,  Chesterton 
understood  is  less  suggestive  to  thinking  than 
Chesterton  misunderstood.  To  be  appreciated, 
this  Rock  of  Gibraltar  against  Radicalism 
must  be  seen  through  Mediterranean  mists. 

Nothing  in  life  or  conduct  or  in  human  de 
velopment  or  in  art  or  science  appeals  to  Ches 
terton  as  really  worthy  of  excitement.  His 
fervor  is  devoted  to  a  defence  of  the  obvious — 
and  the  obvious  is  very  seldom  the  true.  His 
fear  is  for  the  failure  of  the  unimportant — 
from  the  standpoint  of  most  of  mankind. 
Thinking  humanity  has  become  engrossed  in 
what  it  regards  as  its  real  problems — the  prob 
lems  of  its  regeneration.  Mr.  Chesterton 
achieves  originality  by  ignoring  these  and  as 
suring  us  of  the  extraordinary  importance  of 
the  simple  acts  of  life:  eating,  drinking,  fight- 


76  DEPRECIATIONS 

ing  and  marrying;  and  of  the  farthest  and 
most  futile  flights  of  thinking:  the  thought  of 
why  life  exists,  of  what  follows  death,  of  what 
or  who  is  master  over  these  experiences.  In  a 
word,  he  devotes  himself  to  the  glorification  of 
two  factors  in  experience;  those  things  which 
men  do  naturally,  without  thought,  and  those 
things  which  they  do  naturally  without.  "I 
cannot  understand  the  people  who  take  liter 
ature  seriously,"  he  says  in  All  Things  Con 
sidered.  He  might  have  extended  his  remark 
to  thinkers  in  every  other  department  of  ac 
tivity. 

Mankind  has  become  temporarily  passionate 
for  sensationalism.  Our  journals  have  sa 
tiated  us  with  a  certain  sort;  to  be  effective 
to-day  one  must  discover  new  subjects  to  sen 
sationalize.  Chesterton  has  accomplished  this, 
not  only  by  forcing  his  way  further  into  the 
fantastic,  but  also  by  returning  to  the  obvious, 
and  therefore  most  neglected  realms. 

Mr.  McCabe  and  others  have  contended 
weightily  against  the  Chesterton  method, 
claiming  that  serious  thoughts  ought  not  to  be 
exposed  except  in  solemn  raimant;  still  others, 
scenting  an  antagonism  to  their  progressive  no- 


GILBERT  K.  CHESTERTON 

tions,  have  violently  attacked  his  "theories." 
We  cannot  for  a  moment  lend  our  support 
to  either  objection,  our  contention  being  sim 
ply  and  solely  that  in  a  thoroughly  charm 
ing  and  adequate  way,  Mr.  Chesterton  gives 
us  (in  a  philosophical  sense)  absolutely  no 
theories  at  all. 

He  is  unquestionably  important  in  his  par 
ticular  field.    As  an  ethical  connoisseur  of  sug 
gestive  and  thought-provoking  power,   he  is 
second  only  to  Shaw  in  present-day  England. 
One  man  will  read  his  writings  with  a  con 
tinually  mounting  desire  to  answer  back,  an 
other  with  a  passion  to  imitate;  it  is  possible 
a  unique  third  may  be  moved  to  equally  pas 
sionate  agreement.     He  provokes   scorn   and 
hatred,  love  and  envy ;  but  always  thought,  and 
almost  always  pleasure.     These  are  the  char 
acteristics  of  a  clever,  but  not  of  a  great  writer. 
He  always  wounds  or  delights  the  mind,  but 
never  the  heart.     He  moves  one  intellectually, 
but  never  emotionally  or  spiritually:  and  this 
is  the  first  essential  of  the  authentic  artist. 
Chesterton  may  tell  us  that  emotion  is  the  only 
valid  guide,  but  we  believe  it  or  not  as  we 
please;  he  does  not  make  us  feel  that  it  is 


78  DEPRECIATIONS 

so.  In  this,  he  again  differs  radically  from 
Shaw,  who,  not  strictly  a  philosopher  (though 
he  possesses  a  singularly  complete  and  well- 
defended  standpoint)  is,  even  in  his  criticism, 
a  superb  creative  artist. 

In  Shaw,  constrained  as  he  has  forced  him 
self  to  be,  we  feel  the  surge  of  almost  over 
mastering  desires,  we  see  the  supernal  light  of 
utterly  unrealizable,  and  therefore  supremely 
valuable,  ideals.  In  Chesterton  we  are  blinded 
by  a  burst  of  splendid  sparks;  we  are  never 
burned  by  the  fires  that  should  generate  them. 

No  one  need  contend  that  it  is  harder  to  be 
serious  than  to  be  clever.  It  may  even  be  more 
difficult  to  be  clever  than  to  be  humorous  or 
witty.  The  question  is  chiefly  whether  it  is 
more  worth  while  to  produce  a  number  of  vol 
umes  of  somewhat  labored  cleverness,  lit  with 
an  occasional  beam  of  witticism  or  whimsy, 
than  it  is  to  furnish  the  world  with  a  bit  of 
actualized  soul,  a  creation  brilliant  with  the 
superbly  vital  and  yet  superhuman  flame  of 
inspiration.  The  former  is  what  Chesterton 
has  done;  the  latter  is  literature.  The  former 
momentarily  delights  a  large  number  of  peo 
ple,  just  as  an  effective  and  original  cartoon 


GILBERT  K.  CHESTERTON  79 

of  our  political  situation  does ;  the  latter  quick 
ens  the  blood  and  starts  a  divine  passion  in 
the  brain  of  certain  men  and  women  as  long 
as  life  lasts  upon  earth. 

Now  it  is  in  the  creative  efforts  of  a  writer 
rather  than  in  his  criticism  or  biographies  that 
we  ]ook  for  those  elusive  elements  which  so 
impress  the  human  spirit  with  their  depth 
and  permanence  that  we  characterize  that 
in  which  they  are  contained  as  literature. 
In  the  novels  of  Mr.  Chesterton,  if  anywhere, 
we  should  expect  to  find  the  most  complete  and 
perfect  expression  of  his  ideas,  for  in  them  he 
has  given  us  absolutely  nothing  else. 

In  neither  The  Napoleon  of  Netting  Hill  nor 
The  Man  Who  Was  Thursday,  nor  in  his  more 
recent  book,  The  Ball  and  the  Cross,  can  he 
possibly  pretend  to  the  drawing  of  a  single 
character.  Their  pages  are  populated  with 
name-bearing  progeny  whose  conversation  is 
very  edifying  and  enjoyable.  It  would  be  too 
much,  however,  to  expect  us  to  regard  these 
cleverly  constructed  mimes  as  people.  They 
are  wonderfully  simple  organisms.  Intellectu 
ally,  each  is  infatuated  with  some  single  notion ; 
and  physically,  but  for  the  antics  we  are  told  of 


80  DEPRECIATIONS 

their  performing,  we  could  be  quite  sure  they 
did  not  exist.  Each  of  the  books  is  furnished 
with  a  dozen  marionettes  expressly  built  for  the 
purpose  of  tossing  ideas  at  the  places  where 
(were  they  men  and  women)  their  brains 
might  be  supposed  to  be. 

In  plot,  the  volumes  are  ingenious  beyond 
brief  description.  At  the  opening  of  each  we 
find  the  author  inspired  by  a  fanciful  (almost 
imaginative)  notion  by  means  of  which  he 
gets  his  figures  moving  at  lightning  speed. 
They  move  so  rapidly,  in  fact,  that  by  the  end 
of  the  third  or  fourth  chapter  they  have  no 
very  particular  place  left  to  go  to  and  are 
forced  back  to  begin  the  fun  over  again.  This 
time  the  journey  proceeds  with  even  greater 
expedition,  and  the  bewildered  reader  finds 
himself  ready  for  a  third,  then  a  fourth,  and 
(if  a  sufficient  number  of  pages  are  to  be  cov 
ered)  for  a  fifth,  sixth,  seventh  or  eighth  round 
of  duplication.  Finally,  the  originally  inspired 
writer  feels  that  something  must  be  done  to 
round  up  the  race  and  so  he  pulls  his  crew  into 
a  conveniently  located  lunatic  asylum  (as  in 
The  Ball  and  the  Cross)  and  the  exhausted 
reader,  feeling  the  divine  appropriateness  of 


GILBERT  K.  CHESTERTON  81 

the  end  at  least,  wonders  how  the  maddest 
mortal  could  have  supposed  that  because  a 
well-organized  adventure  delighted  him  at  first 
perusal,  he  should  be  expected  to  cover  the 
identical  ground  in  an  infinite  number  of  repe 
titions. 

In  all  three  of  the  novels  we  are  always 
hearing  what  the  characters  have  said  and 
done — never  what  they  thought  or  what  they 
were.  They  bounce  from  one  pose  to  another, 
always  doing  something,  forever  talking,  but 
never  seeming  to  accomplish  anything.  In 
spite  of  the  number  and  vivacity  of  their  acts, 
one  feels  an  utter  lack  of  consistent  and  neces 
sary  action.  The  author  seems  to  think  it 
enough  to  make  his  opinionated  puppets  do — 
it  makes  very  little  difference  what,  or  how, 
so  long  as  they  keep  it  up. 

It  is  not  so  much  a  lack  of  reason  as  of 
rhythm.  As  manipulator,  Chesterton  is 
forced  continually  to  recharge  the  rifle  from 
which  he  shoots  his  circumstances,  so  that  we 
get  a  rapid-fire  succession  of  disconnected 
(though  not  dissimilar)  happenings  that  is  ex 
tremely  disconcerting.  The  novels  are  not,  like 
Meredith's,  "chaos  illumined  by  flashes  of 


82  DEPRECIATIONS 

lightning,"  but  lightning  almost  entirely  ob 
scured  in  chatoic  thunder  clouds.  Sometimes 
the  blinding  flame  escapes  in  a  flash;  never  for 
a  moment  is  there  the  life-warmth  of  the  sun 
light.  It  is  much  as  if  a  gray  mist  were  torn 
to  shreds  of  silver  by  unexpected  gleams.  At 
their  best,  his  splendor  causes  an  ecstatic 
shudder  to  run  down  the  spine  of  the 
reader,  which  forces  upon  him  a  wild  but  mo 
mentary  joy.  Such  flashes  burn  the  mind  into 
shape  for  future  thinking. 

It  is  not  the  writer  who  thrusts  upon  us 
totally  undreamed  ideas,  nor  is  it  (as  Mr. 
Chesterton  insists)  he  who  tells  us  what  we 
have  always  known  but  never  expressed,  who 
usually  affords  us  pleasure ;  but  it  is  that  man 
who  suggests,  as  Chesterton  frequently 
does,  by  an  audacious  epigram  which  antag 
onizes  or  captivates  us  (in  the  end  it  makes 
little  difference  which),  ideas  which  may  carry 
us  on  to  hours  of  unconfined  contemplation. 

All  of  the  boldest  and  most  personal  of 
Chesterton's  characteristics  are  illustrated  by 
The  Ball  and  the  Cross.  A  brief  study  of 
the  story,  an  examination  of  its  participants, 
and  an  investigation  of  its  insignificance,  re- 


GILBERT  K.  CHESTERTON 

veal  the  man  at  his  best  and  at  his  worst.  ^ 

Two  puppets,  armed  with  antagonistic  re 
ligious  views  and  with  no  possible  opinions  on, 
or  connection  with,  anything  else  in  the  uni 
verse,  but  nevertheless  characterized  with  in 
explicable  bad  humor  as  Scotchmen,  disagree 
ing  about  the  virginity  of  the  Virgin,  deter 
mine  to  fight  each  other.    Both  being  somewhat 
more   (or  less)   than  lunatics,  neither  for  a 
moment  imagines  that  any  genuine  solution  of 
their  problem  can  possibly  result  from  their 
duel,  but  their  literary  creator  assures  us  from 
behind  the  stage  that  duelling  is  the  only  nat 
ural,  logical  and  necessary  exercise  for  two 
men  in  their  position   to   embark   upon.     A 
dozen  times,  under  the  most  varied  and  cleverly 
constructed  conditions,  they  begin  their  com 
bat,  each  time  to  be  interrupted  by  the  impres 
sive  figure  of  a  British  policeman  or  some 
other  solid  representative  of  respectable  so 
ciety.     Each  time  they  flee  and,  turning,  be 
hold  the  head  of  said  policeman  just  rising 
over  a  mound  or  wall  which  always  happens 
to  be  behind  them. 

The  caperings  of  these  enthusiasts  from  one 
geographical  position  to  another,  along  with 


84  DEPRECIATIONS 

some  slight  drifting  from  their  original  emo 
tional  situation,  constitutes  the  total  plot  of 
the  novel.  Both  the  men  (with  such  others 
as  appear  from  time  to  time — femininity  is 
practically  excluded)  are  simply  caustic 
mouthpieces  of  the  Chester tonian  entity.  It 
makes  little  difference  where  this  entity  hap 
pens  to  lodge  itself,  whether  in  Professor  Lu 
cifer,  the  aeronaut,  or  Michael,  the  priest,  or 
Turnbull,  the  atheist,  or  Maclan,  the  High 
lander,  it  is  utterly  true  to  its  own  nature :  its 
expression  is  always  precisely  the  same. 

The  novel  contains  a  possible  ethical  infer 
ence:  that  men  would  do  better  to  abandon 
their  philosophical,  sociological,  ethical  or 
other  controversies,  and  realize  at  once  that 
the  existence  of  a  Deity  is  the  only  question  of 
even  the  slightest  importance  to  the  race,  and 
that  to  the  determination  of  this  problem  every 
energy  may  be  most  worthily  devoted.  This 
is  the  only  possible  teaching  of  the  book. 
There  are,  as  usual,  occasional  successful  epi 
grams,  a  number  of  suggestive  paradoxes,  per 
haps  even  a  subtly  worded  truth  or  two,  but 
this  is  the  sole  large  affirmative  contribution 
of  the  volume. 


GILBERT  K.  CHESTERTON  85 

In  this  novel,  as  in  every  other  work,  Ches 
terton  shows  himself  as  a  bit  of  a  moralist  and 
much  of  a  cleverist  (to  coin  a  necessary  name 
for  those  who  take  their  sense  of  humor  seri 
ously),  but  as  neither  a  philosopher  nor  a 
creative  artist. 

How  and  where,  then,  must  we  classify  him? 

If  we  must  do  so,  let  us  rank  him  where  he 
naturally  and  logically  belongs :  as  a  charming 
charlatan  who  has  captured  the  reading  world 
by  writing  stupidity  with  brilliance. 

What,  indeed,  are  the  great  Chesterton 
affirmations?  An  approval  of  drink  and  meta 
physics,  of  pugnacity  and  religion,  from  the 
pragmatic  standpoint  that  all  are  healthy.  On 
his  negative  side  may  be  placed  the  denial  of 
the  progress  of  mankind  toward  the  most  per 
fect  society  that  the  world  has  seen,  and  the 
denial  of  the  humanitarian  insistence  upon 
Man  rather  than  definite  men.  These  are  the 
fundamentals  of  his  attitude;  yet,  in  spite  of 
them,  he  adores  Shaw  and  worships  Christ, 
the  greatest  progressive  and  the  greatest  hu 
manitarian  in  History. 

Whoever  has  something  really  tremendous 
to  say,  may  possibly  be  read  by  some  people 


86  DEPRECIATION 

even  if  he  be  serious;  but  let  him  have  very 
little  of  any  possible  consequence  to  say  and 
yet  utter  it  gloriously,  and  the  public  falls  pros 
trate  at  his  feet.  Notwithstanding  that  he 
has  never  created  a  character,  Chesterton 
proved  himself  a  good  psychologist.  Instead 
of  wasting  years  in  finding  out  whether  he 
was  really  arriving  at  any  ideas,  he  proceeded 
with  unflinching  vigor  to  the  long  and  arduous, 
but  well-recompensed,  task  of  developing  a 
means  of  satisfying  the  great  literary  demand 
of  the  day:  cleverness  of  expression. 

The  labors  of  half  a  lifetime  have  met  with 
adequate  reward,  and  we  find  him  who  might, 
after  years  of  striving,  have  expressed  a  few 
trivial  additions  to  the  fund  of  intellectual  ma 
terial  mankind  is  heir  to,  roaming  the  fields  of 
writing,  visionless  and  uncreative,  but  abun 
dantly  and  brilliantly  prolific.  Let  us  furnish 
this  man  with  an  unstinted  measure  of  enthu 
siasm,  let  us  be  frank  and  fearless  in  our  ap 
preciation  of  his  accomplishment,  and  do  not 
let  us  belittle  the  glory  of  this  by  wrongly  class 
ifying  it  with  the  less  interesting  work  of  the 
thinkers  and  the  dreamers. 


A  VISIT  TO  G.  K.  C. 

Beaconsfield  is  the  little  village,  forty  min 
utes  out  of  London,  where  the  arch  cleverist 
of  his  age  resides.  Coming  to  it,  as  I  did,  at 
night,  I  saw  only  the  glimmering  station  and 
the  stone  railway  bridges,  the  houses  near  and 
far  as  I  passed  in  my  cab,  and  finally  the  ivy- 
netted  cottage  approached  by  stony  steps 
reared  beside  possibly  medieval,  but  delicate 
and  thriving  flower  beds,  in  which  dwell  both 
the  Chestertons. 

I  speak  quite  justly  of  the  Chestertons,  Gil 
bert  Keith  and  Frances,  his  wife.  A  very 
famous  literary  personage  in  England  has 
told  me  that  without  the  one  there  could  not 
have  been  the  other.  My  visit  led  me  to  believe 
as  much. 

I  was  left  by  a  sprightly,  possibly  orthodox 
maid  in  a  parlor  hung  with  prints  and  water 
colors — good  ones — and  dotted  with  books  in 
revolving  cases  and  pretty  little  vases  partly 
filled  with  flowers.  But  very  soon  came  the 
tremendous  person  I  was  there  to  visit. 

I  had  expected  a  large  man.    I  had  been  told 

87 


88  DEPRECIATIONS 

and  prepared.  But  seeing  him,  I  gave  a  little 
inward  gasp.  Chesterton  is  enormous.  His 
head  is  massive,  his  hair  thick,  his  neck  fat, 
his  belly  capacious,  and  he  must  be  six  feet 
three  in  height.  I  was  a  pigmy  in  the  left- 
handed  grasp  of  a  giant.  I  saw  the  right  hand, 
dangling  helplessly  in  its  sling.  For  only  a  day 
or  two  before,  the  medieval  gardener  had  left 
a  medieval  tub  before  the  medieval  door  step 
on  which  the  world's  sublimest  propagandist 
of  medievalism  was  forced  to  march  forth,  in 
to  the  open  and  modernity.  In  this  case 
Humpty  Dumpty  had  a  great  fall  and  the 
broken  right  arm  was  a  relic.  The  Weekly 
Illustrated  News  still  gets  its  medieval  page, 
but  this  is  now  being  quite  modernly  dictated. 

Chesterton  I  found  no  heretic  in  hospitality. 
I  was  gathered  glowingly  into  the  larger  dining 
room,  and  there  we  proceeded  at  once  to  feast- 
ing  on  appropriately  named  Benedictine  and 
cigars  that  were  no  doubt  called  Franciscans, 
tho  as  they  were  without  wrappers,  I  cannot 
be  sure. 

We  discoursed  as  we  drank  our  cordial  from 
appropriately  capacious  tumblers. 


A  VISIT  TO  G.  K.  C  89 

Shall  I  truthfully  confess  to  the  utterance 
of  ninety  words  from  half-past  eight  till  half- 
past  ten?  That  surely  does  not  impugn  the 
master  conversationalist's  abilities. 

Chesterton  is  a  phrase  maker  of  rare,  quick 
wit  and  jolly  humor.  You  readers  of  him 
could  have  guessed  it — that  his  talk  is  but  a 
slightly  milder  literacy  just  as  his  writing  is 
but  a  sublimated  conversation.  He  talks  well 
and  much,  humorously,  sincerely  and  very  tol 
erantly.  And  listening  to  him,  you  realize  that 
no  one  could  possibly  be  a  jollier,  plesanter  com 
panion. 

"Even  if  the  majority  of  people  in  a  gener 
ation  get  away  from  the  normal,  as  they  do  to 
day,  we  must  not  forget  the  line  of  conduct 
that  is  normal  to  history  and  the  race.  We 
must  not  take  the  exception  and  try  to  make  the 
average  live  up  to  it." 

This  is  not  exactly  what  he  said — he  may 
have  said  something  clever — but  this  is  what 
has  remained  in  my  memory  as  the  sense  of  his 
speech.  It  struck  me  as  an  unusually  excellent 
and  brief  expression  of  the  real  Chesterton,  of 
everything  that  he  stands  for  and  all  that  he 


90  DEPRECIATIONS 

means.  It  could  be  applied  to  marriage,  to 
government,  to  social  intercourse  and  art,  and 
I  do  not  think  he  has  expressed  it  quite  so 
clearly  elsewhere. 

'The  difference  between  man  and  woman  is 
responsible  for  almost  everything  that  has  ever 
happened,"  he  said.     "We  must  realize  that 
when  we  try  to  make  man  and  woman  alike." 
That,  again,  suggests  the  value  to  the  pio 
neers  themselves  of  Chesterton's  eternal  ques 
tioning  of  progress.     They  must  answer  him 
before  they  can  sensibly  proceed.     They  must 
know  whether  they  want  things  to  happen  dif 
ferently  in  the  future  and  they  must  try  to 
know  and  face  the  vast  effect  on  all  events 
that  sexual  equality  will  have. 

For  the  first  time  I  learned  of  Chesterton's 
expedition  into  the  province  of  the  graphic 
arts.  He  had  always  scribbled  hobgoblins  and 
gargoyles  and  demons  on  his  manuscript.  But 
a  few  years  ago  he  prepared  a  bouquet  of  car 
toons,  political  and  otherwise,  some  of  which 
were  used  for  a  tract,  Hilaire  Belloc's.  A 
few  copies  of  these  were  issued  by  a  publisher 
and  possibly  some  sold.  He  allowed  me  to 


A  VISIT  TO  G.  K.   C  91 

take  home  a  few  of  the  unpublished  pencil 
drawings  and  they  are  gloriously  character 
istic  of  his  jollity.  Mrs.  Chesterton,  who  was 
curled  up  on  a  stool  in  the  fireplace  during 
our  first  three  glasses,  left  to  fetch  the  draw 
ings,  returned,  admiring  them,  medievally 
wifelike  and  frowned  when  I  criticised. 

Two  hours  with  the  man  removes  for  all 
time  one's  allegiance  to  the  current  folly  that 
Chesterton's  ideas  are  jokes.  His  point  of 
view  may  be  riduculed,  but  his  sincerity  is 
anything  but  ridiculous.  "St.  Augustine  and 
the  rest  thought  as  I  do,  but  then  it  wasn't 
customary  to  write  humorously,"  is  his  ex 
planation. 


A  VISIT  TO  H.  G.  WELLS 

Mr.  Wells  is  so  conscious  of  his  fame  that 
he  frequently  fails  to  sign  his  letters.  I  am  not 
an  autograph  collector,  but  I  was  somewhat 
disturbed  when  I  received  a  card  neatly  writ 
ten  upon  and  enclosed  in  an  envelope  post 
marked  "Hampstead,"  with  Mr.  Wells'  ad 
dress  stamped  in  raised  letters  within,  and  ap 
parently  written  by  him  but  entirely  lacking 
any  kind  of  signature.  To  make  sure,  I  was 
forced  to  communicate  with  a  New  Yorker 
mentioned  on  the  card  who  was  supposed  to 
have  received  a  letter  from  Mr.  Wells  at  the 
same  time. 

My  astonishment  was  somewhat  less  when, 
during  my  last  day  in  Paris,  a  telegram  came 
from  Ireland  inviting  me  to  be  at  the  National 
Liberal  Club  in  London  on  Wednesday  even 
ing.  Mrs.  Wells  had  written  to  me  a  couple 
of  times  regarding  the  matter  and  so  I  felt 
certain  that  I  should  ask  for  her  husband  when 
I  found  myself  under  the  marble  archway  of 
the  Liberal  Party's  London  headquarters,  at 
tacked  by  gorgeously  dressed  attendants  deter- 

93 


94  DEPRECIATIONS 

mined  to  find  out  the  cause  of  my  presence 
within  the  sacred  portals. 

Of  course  I  started  post  haste  for  the  Gare 
du  Nord.  I  passed  stormily  from  Boulogne 
to  Folkstone,  arrived  wearily  at  Charing  Cross 
and  was  driven  to  a  friend's  in  Bedford  Square, 
who  possessed  too  much  old  British  hospital 
ity  to  hear  of  my  going  to  a  hotel. 

At  five  minutes  before  eight  I  waited  in  the 
visitors'  room  in  the  Liberal  Club's  liberal  quar 
ters  in  Whitehall,  by  the  side  of  a  heavily 
whiskered  Frenchman  to  whom  I  was  after 
wards  introduced.  He  was  Mr.  Davray,  the 
translator  of  all  of  Mr.  Wells'  books.  Not 
many  minutes  had  expired,  or  much  patience, 
when  mine  host  arrived.  We  wandered  up 
wards  to  the  dining  hall  and  to  melons  and 
hors  d'oeuvres  and  beef  and  ice  cream,  all  of 
them  mellowed  by  a  sparkling  Madeira. 

Wells  is  a  little  man.  He  is  thin  and  so  is 
his  hair;  his  eyes  are  unimpressive  and  his 
moustache  is  straggly.  None  of  the  Parlia 
mentarians  about  us,  failing  to  know  him, 
would  have  guessed  the  presence  of  England's 
greatest  writer,  of  the  one  man  who  is  pictur- 


A  VISIT  TO  H.  G.  WELLS  95 

ing  to  this  age,  and  interpreting  for  all  time,  the 
method  of  thought  and  the  progress  of  his 
generation.  Wells  it  is  who,  better  than  any 
one  else,  is  synthesizing  modernity  for  itself. 

Well,  we  sat  there :  Davray  with  his  great, 
impressive  beard,  Wells  with  his  measly  mous 
tache  and  myself — devouring  the  good  things 
of  this  world,  and  talking  of  a  better  world  to 
come. 

We  all  know  well  what  Mr.  Wells  believes. 
He  has  told  us  so  carefully  himself,  particu 
larly  in  First  and  Last  Things.  But  Wells,  like 
all  great  personalities,  is  not  only  a  creature 
of  moods  but  a  man  made  up  of  several  en 
tities,  of  many  separate  co-ordinately  devel 
oping  characters,  all  contributing  to  the  great 
central  Liberalism  that  we  have  come  to  know 
as  the  keynote  of  his  spirit,  as  it  was  of 
William  James'  and  is  of  Henri  Bergson's. 
Wells  embraces  all  the  tendencies  of  his  time 
because  he  tolerates  them  all.  Motivated  by  a 
divine  curiosity,  controlled  by  an  infinite  tol 
erance,  he  marches  godlike  where  earthy  angels 
fear  to  tread.  In  this,  he  may  be,  as  the 
proverb  says,  a  fool,  but  his  foolishness  is  the 
foolishness  of  the  all-wise. 


96  DEPRECIATIONS 

The  career  of  the  man  represents  the  prog 
ress  of  a  personality.  He  started  telling  us 
stories  that  were  good  for  us  to  read.  He  ends 
by  giving  us  thoughts  that  are  good  for  us  to 
know.  When  Bernard  Shaw  began  to  print  his 
ideas  there  was  almost  no  response.  Then  he 
turned  to  telling  stories  (in  play  form)  and 
became  the  most  talked-of  figure  in  the  English- 
speaking  world.  Now,  once  more,  he  is  back 
at  the  old  pedagogic  work,  but  he  retains  the 
form  with  which  he  made  himself  the  aston 
ishment  of  the  age.  Wells  has  grown  more 
gradually  from  the  little  man  he  started  to  be, 
up  into  the  great  figure  that  is  his  present  self. 

Wells  showed,  even  as  early  as  1895,  by  the 
production  of  his  Select  Conversations  with 
an  Uncle,  that  he  had  more  than  an  inventive 
talent.  But  these  little  writings  upon  little 
themes,  though  clever  and  perspicacious,  are 
limited  and  uncertain.  They  suggest  the  affec 
tations  of  Max  Beerbohm,  without  possessing 
the  fineness  of  his  touch;  and  affectations,  like 
sweet  pickles,  should  be  exquisitely  sugared 
and  soured  to  be  in  perfect  taste. 
There  is  but  one  affectation  about  Wells'  "sci- 


A  VISIT  TO  H.  G.  WELLS  97 

entific"  stories,  which  he  published  before  he 
discovered  his  capability  at  characterization, 
and  this  is  the  affectation  of  imagination. 
There  is  no  genuine  imagination  in  beating  out 
cleverness  of  the  type  of  Dr.  Moreau's  Island 
or  The  Time  Machine.  They  are  more  sub 
tle,  simpler,  and  better  written  than  the  sto 
ries  of  Jules  Verne,  but  only  in  this  are  they 
superior  to  them  or  to  the  widely  circulat 
ing  tales  of  Nicholas  Carter.  The  point  of 
view,  the  inventive  quality  necessary  for  their 
construction  is  the  same.  Some  people  may 
define  imagination  so  as  to  include  the  strange 
meander  ings  of  this  type  of  story.  But  such 
folk  are  at  least  compelled  to  admit  that  they 
are  lacking  in  that  important  element  of  all 
great  works  of  the  imagination:  inspiration. 
The  early  Wells  stories  are  not  struck  forth  by 
a  creative  hand;  they  are  manufactured  prod 
ucts,  put  together  piecemeal,  none  of  them  writ 
ten  in  any  but  the  calmest  and  most  conscious 
mood.  Inspiration  is  essentially  the  soaring 
of  one's  soul  without  the  knowledge  of  one's 
mind.  In  the  gleaming  moment,  the  mind  be 
comes  the  wage-slave  of  the  spirit,  receiving  in 


98  DEPRECIATIONS 

return  for  labor  the  gratifying  hallucination 
of  having  itself  done  the  work. 

The  Wonderful  Visit  is  the  earliest  Wells 
book  shot  with  his  satire  and  suggesting  the 
imagination  that  is  to  come.  Satire  is  like 
smoking:  the  real  craving  for  it  comes  only  in 
maturity  after  the  sweet-pickle  stage  has  passed 
away.  Here  in  this  book  we  have  the  glim 
merings  of  a  mature  Wells.  Explanations  are 
waived;  personality  is  emphasized.  In  The 
Food  of  the  Gods  the  advance  is  unmistakable. 
Neither  this  nor  any  of  his  earlier  "scientific" 
stories  are  novels  in  the  higher  sense,  for  they 
are  not  slices  of  the  meat  of  life  steeped  in  its 
warm,  red  blood,  but  in  them  the  Wells  of 
Kipps  and  Love  and  Mr.  Lewisham  appears 
in  embryo. 

This  Wells  of  Kipps  and  Lewisham  is  one 
of  the  rarest  spirits  of  the  decade.  He  is 
akin  to  Barrie  but  mightier  and  more  genuine 
than  Barrie.  He  is  a  bit  like  W.  J.  Locke  but 
he  is  deeper,  more  significant  than  Locke.  In 
all  three  there  is  the  same  youth  and  gentleness, 
for  all  three  are  old  enough  to  have  learned 
youthfulness,  and  strong  enough  to  be  kind. 


A  VISIT  TO  H.  G.  WELLS  99 

The  new  Wells  that  was  born  with  Tono- 
Bungay  is  carried  to  its  natural  consummation 
in  "The  NewMachiavelli."  This  is  the  greatest 
and  the  least  artistic  of  his  books.  It  is,  in  fact, 
abominably  inartistic.  It  is  the  blood- full  mind, 
the  burning  intellect  ,running  riot — magnifi 
cently  running  riot  under  the  influence  of  an 
ungovernable  mentality.  There  is  no  control. 
There  is  no  attempt  at  control.  The  statesman- 
philosopher  who  abandons  public  life  because  of 
an  extra-marital  "affaire,"  is,  of  course,  rem 
iniscent  of  Wells  himself.  All  his  books  are  so. 
But  this,  and  all  the  rest  of  the  story,  are 
merely  incidental.  It  is  his  thoughts  in  retire 
ment  that  Wells  values.  The  book  will  stand 
or  fall  before  posterity  on  its  presentation  of 
the  inner  consciousness  of  this  age. 

Problems  of  every  sort  are  given  paragraphs 
— often  chapters.  Events  of  every  sort,  involv 
ing  all  complexities,  are  dealt  with  possibly 
more  frankly  than  in  any  other  book.  It  is  a 
sombre  work  but  the  strain  of  joy  runs  deep 
in  its  writing.  It  is  the  joy  of  him  who  realizes 
all  the  sorrows  of  the  world. 

Much  has  been  written  of  The  New  Machia- 
velli  as  a  philosophical  consideration  of  the 


100  DEPRECIATIONS 

liberal  movement  in  contemporary  England. 
But  it  is  not  from  its  acute  political  discussion 
that  the  book  gains  its  most  fundamental  sig 
nificance  any  more  than  it  is  because  Tono 
Bungay  brought  vividly  to  light  the  methods 
of  modern  business  that  it  is  a  book  capable  of 
sinking  beneath  the  surface  consciousness  of 
its  readers.  The  New  Machiavelli  is  a  sig 
nificant  novel  beyond  any  that  have  appeared 
in  many  years.  It  is  significant  because  of  its 
absolute  reality,  of  its  uncompromising  frank 
ness,  of  its  fearless  truth.  As  the  life  of  Rem 
ington,  the  hero,  progresses,  every  point,  every 
condition,  whether  of  early  training,  family  re 
lationship,  scholarship,  sex  interests,  or  any 
thing  else,  is  discussed,  pictured  for  the  reader 
in  unmistakable  sincerity. 

This  is  is  what  makes  The  New  Machia 
velli  a  great  book,  and  which  stamps  H.  G. 
Wells  as  a  great  man — perhaps  the  greatest 
man  in  England  today.  Neither  Thackeray  nor 
Dickens,  nor  any  novelist  who  has  since  been 
given  us  has  been  capable  of  this  same  fearless 
truth ;  nor  has  any  possessed  the  same  vigorous 
ability  to  deal  with  practically  all  the  questions 


A  VISIT  TO  H.  G.  WELLS  101 

of  life  and  conduct  in  the  same  intellectually 
satisfying  manner. 

I  found  myself  thinking  all  these  things  as 
I  sat  looking  at  the  little  man — looking  him 
over,  one  might  almost  say. 

On  our  evening  together  the  practical  and 
scientific  Wells  was  uppermost,  and,  like  all 
frank  moderns,  being  interested  in  sex,  we 
talked  of  it,  and  Wells  was  matter-of-fact,  ex 
traordinarily,  I  thought.  It's  all  very  simple 
after  you  get  over  the  romance  stage,"  he  said. 
Strange  words,  they  seemed  to  me,  from  one 
who  had  expressed  so  often  the  nuances,  the 
variabilities  of  this  most  universal  and  dom 
inant  impulse.  "Your  American  women,"  he 
continued,  "don't  seem  to  know  that  anything 
exists  below  the  diaphragm."  It  was  all  quite 
simple  to  this  literateur  of  biological  procliv 
ities. 

Afterwards  we  walked  up  the  yellow  marble 
staircase  to  the  rooms  where  "the  party  is  held 
together" — presumably  through  receptions  held 
by  recently  created  Liberal  nobleman  who  gen 
erously  shake  hands  with  Commoners  and  lo 
cal  representatives  from  English  rural  commu 
nities. 


102  DEPRECIATIONS 

It  was  all  very  strange:  this  most  revolu 
tionary  of  English  novelists  attempting  to  be 
"constructive"  by  belonging  to  the  old-fash 
ioned  finance-dominated  National  "Liberal" 
Club.  All  about  were  beefy  members — the  bul 
wark  of  Merrie  England — smoking  their  cigars 
and  guffawing  gorgeously. 

We  talked  of  American  politics  and  the  in 
evitable  Roosevelt  and  both  our  countries'  need 
of  freedom  from  the  professional  politician  and 
the  legal  type  of  mind  "that  tries  to  talk  much 
and  do  nothing,"  to  win  in  argument  rather 
than  to  establish  truth.  We  were  both  agreed 
that,  Socialism  presented  the  only  complete  con 
structive  program  in  the  world  today  and 
equally  that  Socialism  was  not  the  property  of 
any  party  or  any  group:  it  might  come  any 
how,  in  ways  unknown  or  undreamed.  Then 
Davray  told  us  of  the  new  plan  of  proportional 
representation  in  France,  ten-thirty  struck,  and 
the  evening  was  at  an  end.  Davray  and  I 
sauntered  out  on  the  square,  fronting  on 
Westminster  Abbey  and  the  Gothic  Towers  of 
the  Houses  of  Parliament,  all  of  them  dull  and 
gloomy  through  a  drizzling  rain.  Wells 


A  VISIT  TO  H.  G.  WELLS 


103 


went  up  to  the  room  he  had  taken  for^the 
night,  hoping  to  sleep,  as  he  said,  "the  jolly 
sleep  of  all  good  Liberals." 


THE  TRAGEDY  OF  THE  FINALIST. 

Finality  is  the  goal  of  the  small-spirited. 
The  search  for  it  is  unending,  since  in  the 
things  of  life  that  count,  it  is  not  to  be  found. 
Our  present  century  is  teaching  us  to  deal  not 
in  absolutes  but  in  relativities.  In  the  relating 
of  one  fact  to  another,  in  applying  this  to  that, 
lies  the  solution  of  our  problems;  those  ques 
tions  that  require  final  answers  we  are  pre 
pared  to  hand  on  to  another  generation — 
twenty  or  a  hundred  generations  hence. 

The  small  scientist,  working  over  his  mi 
croscope,  perhaps  on  a  specimen  of  a  genus  not 
one  man  in  ten  thousand  ever  sees,  demands 
that  his  experiment  be  perfect  in  result.  As 
the  problem  enlarges,  the  exactness  of  its  so 
lution  becomes  less  possible.  And  the  prob 
lems  of  our  social  life  are  the  largest  that  con 
front  any  of  the  sciences. 

We  are  searching  in  the  world  for  a  method 
of  living.  For  the  attainment  of  this  we  find  it 
necessary  to  secure  some  approximate  under 
standing  of  our  own  character,  of  that  of  the 
people  about  us,  and  of  the  physical  and  mater 
ial  world  at  large.  These  are  our  supreme  es- 

105 


!06  DEPRECIATION 

sentials.  Our  need  for  them  is  as  self-evident 
as  for  anything  conceivable  by  the  mind  of 
man.  Toward  them  proceeds  the  unthinking 
search  of  every  groping  child;  they  are  the  un 
realized  or  the  conscious  goal  of  all  sane  hu 
manity. 

Such  understanding  of  one's  self  and  other 
men  and  the  qualities  of  the  world  is  known 
to  be  in  its  very  nature  incomplete  and  relative, 
and  is  accepted  as  such.  With  it  as  a  goal  mari 
has  achieved  art  and  science,  comfort,  knowl 
edge,  and  all  that  we  think  of  as  civilization. 
But  built  up  along  with  this  has  been  the  crav 
ing  for  finalities,  the  seeking  for  truths  that 
one  might  think  of  as  essential,  for  existences 
that  it  might  be  imagined  would  never  die. 

Alas,  the  appetite  for  the  everlasting  has 
been  the  damage  of  the  ages.  The  effort  at  its 
gluttonous  satisfaction  has  left  history  reeking 
with  carnage,  injustice  and  despair.  The  tale 
of  its  dogmatic  onlaughts  on  the  happiness  of 
men  is  more  dire  than  the  combined  quintes 
sence  of  all  tragedies  conceived  from  "Oedipus" 
to  "Ghosts". 

The  genius  of  each  age  cried  out  in  protest, 
but  mankind  rushed  madly  on,  crushing  oppon- 


THE  TRAGEDY  OF  THE  FINALIST     107 

ents  of  the  belief  in  final  things.  Gradually 
these  grew.  Today  they  are  powerful ;  and  now 
at  last  we  glimpse  the  coming  of  a  new  mind- 
fulness  for  the  things  of  this  world. 

Death  is  the  only  Finalist  who  remains  a 
master.  The  rest  of  those  who  assumed  to  in 
form  us  of  the  birthplace  of  the  stars  and  the 
destiny  of  oceans  are  quietly  being  left  to  take 
care  of  little  children  on  the  morning  when  they 
are  not  in  school  and  their  parents  require  an 
approved,  convenient  way  of  being  rid  of  them. 
It  is  not  a  destruction ;  Man  is  merely  stepping 
aside  from  the  fictions  created  by  his  fathers, 
neither  denying  nor  discarding  them,  but 
merely  concerning  himself  with  his  business: 
the  increase  of  the  joy  of  life  for  all.  This 
will  make  use  of  all  the  energies  and  under 
standing  that  the  race  can  bring  to  it. 

Meanwhile  the  Finalists  are  stricken.  No 
more  armies  go  forth  under  their  banners,  no 
governments  rise  or  fall  at  their  dictation  and 
life  goes  hurry ingly  forward  whether  they 
will  or  no.  It  is  well  that  we  should  travel  at 
nerve-wracking  pace:  we  have  centuries  of 
wasted  effort  from  which  to  recover. 


PINERO  THE  PUNCTILIOUS 

Neopolitan,  although  the  most  varied,  is  the 
least  imaginative  of  ices;  the  drama,  most 
complex  of  the  arts,  is  also  the  most  capable 
of  exact  judgment.  Scarcely  any  angle  of  at 
titude  can  be  assumed  which  does  not  find  its 
application  in  the  theatre. 

It  depends  entirely  upon  our  individual 
fancy  whether  we  relish  the  inspired  pugnacity 
of  Shaw;  the  idealistic  harmonies  of  Haupt- 
mann;  the  soft,  sweet  mysteries  of  the  early 
plays  of  Maeterlinck  or  the  per  fervid  power  of 
his  later  ones;  the  titanic  rapture  of  Ibsen's  po 
etic  dramas  or  the  vigorous  soul-tossing  and 
twisting  and  tormenting  of  his  social  works. 

Something  in  us  establishes  inclinations  and 
our  responses  to  art  are  fixed  by  them.  There 
are  still  those  who  enjoy  Pinero.  They  pretend 
to  admire  him:  his  creation  of  fine  phrases; 
they  talk  of  him  as  a  sublime  technician  or 
struggle  to  regard  him  as  the  moulder  of  pro 
found  human  destinies.  This,  they  say,  is 
Art;  not  propaganda,  radicalism,  problem  pres 
entation,  or  any  other  substitute  for  the  naive 
superficialities  that  delight  them.  Such  folk 

109 


110  DEPRECIATIONS 

like  Sudermann.  For  this  there  is,  of  course, 
the  excuse  that  these  two  writers  are  of  our 
time.  The  Zeitgeist  grips  them  and  us  and 
their  petty  fumblings  with  a  pretended  infinite 
tweak  some  temporarily  responsive  chord  in 
our  souls. 

One  cannot  quarrel  with  the  worshippers  of 
the  mediocre.  After  all,  it  is  better  that  they 
should  be  given  good  examples  of  such  theat 
ric  pabulum  as  they  will  swallow.  But  why  not 
examine  the  flaws  that  are  measurable  by  our 
common,  accepted  dramatic  standards? 

The  lines  of  a  Pinero  play  are  clever.  Well- 
wrought  spokesmen  are  thrown  before  us  who 
speak  in  "good,  set  terms."  They  are  never  at 
a  loss  for  a  word;  their  customary  form  of 
address  is  the  epigram.  Of  course  in  the 
farces,  to  achieve  an  easy  laugh,  they  halt ;  but 
with  calculation  and  accuracy.  Is  wit,  our 
w^ondrous  heritage  from  the  most  serious  im 
mortals,  merely  this  forced  product  of  trumped 
up  farce,  or  this  equally  forced  comedic  re 
partee?  When  Pinero  is  not  clever  he  is  dull. 
Once  in  a  while  he  is  saved  by  the  looming  of  a 
possible  climax,  then  comes  the  conscious 


PINERO  THE  PUNCTILIOUS  111 

craftsmanship  again,  killing  the  chance  of  vig 
orous,  sincere  plain  dealing. 

As  for  the  folk,  a  certain  clamminess  clings 
to  even  their  liveliest  moments. 

Shaw's  Mrs.  Warren  defends  her  past;  poor 
Mrs.  Tanqueray  is  sorry  for  it.  At  the 
thought  of  her  lost  innocence  she  bursts  into 
tears.  When  her  stepdaughter  discovers  and 
identifies  her  she  becomes  ineffectually  frantic. 
All  this  is  photographic  of  a  certain  type  of 
"society"  puppet — a  type  that  it  is  difficult  to 
use  for  the  creation  of  sustaining  tragedy. 

Mrs.  Ebbsmith  flashes  into  the  range  of  the 
really  interesting  and  is  backed  down  to  the 
Pinero  level  by  the  astounding  introduction  of 
the  mechanical  religious  motive.  Nero  burned 
Rome  to  achieve  a  theatric  excitement.'  Pinero 
merely  kills  a  character. 

With  the  help  of  the  thoughtless  and  vision- 
less,  Iris,  Pinero  has  created  his  most  perfect 
— and  perfectly  useless  play.  Snatched  from 
the  drawing-room,  Pinero  people  embody  the 
most  disgusting  attributes  of  those  with  "ad 
vantages,"  in  actual  life.  Each  year  gives  us  a 
new  play,  each  with  an  advance  in  reality  and 
distastefulness.  Finally,  in  Mid-Channel  and 


112  DEPRECIATIONS 

The  Thunderbolt  conventionality  has  become 
so  even  conventionally  unattractive  one  won 
ders  why  such  husbands  and  wives  should  ever 
have  had  the  slightest  desire  to  possess  each 
other. 

What  is  the  depth  of  distress  in  these  ''trag 
edies?"  Where  is  the  harrowing  of  spiritual 
vitals  that  stirs  and  strengthens?  Overeating 
at  an  unvaried  meal  gives  the  same  mild  dis 
taste.  One  need  not  go  to  the  theatre. 

Of  course  the  characters  are  "real."  That 
is  why  they  are  not  stirring.  They  conform 
to  our  conventional  conceptions.  They  are  so 
actual  that  they  are  commonplace,  uncreative. 
Ibsen's  people  transcend  the  lifelike.  They  are 
all  personalities.  In  their  veins  courses  a  su 
per-vital  fluid.  They  are  not  obvious,  but  true. 
In  Pinero  we  feel  the  actuality  and  therefore 
the  particularity,  by  instinct.  That  is  why  he 
does  not  influence  us.  That  is  true  of  every 
situation.  He  speaks  before  us,  not  to  us. 
Each  snatch  from  life  must  be  judged  by  the 
individuality  of  its  own  conditions — and  it  is 
never  exactly  us  he  is  picturing.  Ibsen's  les 
sons  are  special  and  yet  dominantly  universal. 
There  theatric  conditions  are  non-essential.  A 


PINERO  THE  PUNCTILIOUS  113 

Doll's  House  is  a  piece  for  every  wife  and  every 
husband;  Little  Eyolf  is  a  play  for  the  mothers 
and  fathers  of  the  world.  Before  we  are  ready 
for  judgment  of  a  Pinero  play  we  must  recol 
lect  the  country  and  caste  which  he  casts.  This 
intellectualizes  our  interest  and  we  come  to 
view  his  dramas,  not  to  live  them. 

What  does  it  matter  that  Pinero's  latest  plays 
are  well  done  in  the  kind  of  construction  we 
admire  today.  The  early  ones,  even  as  far  up 
as  Iris  are  weak  even  in  this.  The  Gay  Lord 
Quex  is  talked  of  as  the  perfect  comedy,  and  is 
really  not  particularly  comic.  It  would  be  a 
drama  were  it  not  for  its  lack  of  significance 
and  weak,  indistinctly  drawn  characters. 

To  ruin  the  idea  of  Mid  Channel  by  devel 
oping  it  in  a  plot  that  is  not  inevitable;  by 
means  of  characters  that  are  meaningless  and 
uninspiring,  and  some  of  them  unnecessary;  to 
distribute  almost  no  dramatic  material  through 
two  acts  and  then  crowd  the  remaining  part, 
seems  scarcely  less  shameful  than  Mrs.  Ebb- 
smith's  bible  snatching  at  the  close  of  the  best 
two  acts  Pinero  ever  wrote.  But  if  one  must 
have  characters  whose  only  concern  in  life  is 


114  DEPRECIATIONS 

love-making,  ideas,  of  course,  must  be  tossed 
on  the  scrap  heat. 

Pinero  is  the  Franz  Liszt  of  drama.  His 
keen  exposes  of  the  commonplace  are  as  ac 
tual  as  folk  songs.  However  distorted,  am 
plified,  conventionalized,  they  remain  believa 
ble  demonstrations.  We  never  doubt  their 
factitiousness.  But  their  truth — that  is  an 
other  matter.  To  be  true,  one  must  have  an 
idea,  a  message,  a  religion.  One  cannot  sim 
ply  peck  at  experience. 

Mr.  Arnold  Bennett  talks  of  ours  as  an 
age  of  realism.  But  mere  reality  will 
never  satisfy  us.  The  exposition  of  actuality  is 
not  creative.  Zola  and  his  like  do  not  blast  the 
watch  towers  of  the  infinite  and  throw  open 
to  our  gaze  the  verity  behind  them.  This  inter 
pretative  demonstration  is  what  man  craves; 
he  demands  drama  that  builds  as  well  as  ex 
poses  life.  A  sophisticated  understanding  of 
life  is  simply  a  primitive  intellectual  necessity 
to  the  artist;  beyond  it  lies  a  naivete  of  soul 
that  has  kept  all  great  creators  forever  child 
like  and  wonder-smitten. 


JOTTINGS  IN  EUROPE 

Countries  and  continents,  like  colognes,  have 
their  essences.  They  have  also  their  nuances, 
their  vagaries,  their  illusive  qualities  and  their 
illusory  dreams.  But  they  possess,  neverthe 
less,  certain  factors  that  are  fundamental,  per 
manent  and  typical. 

America  has  rendered  typical  of  itself  those 
two  useful  words  that  stand  so  often  on 
either  side  of  swinging  doors:  "Push"  and 
"Pull."  Europe,  while  subject  to  character 
ization  by  no  pair  of  monosyllables,  is  never 
theless  capable  of  as  precise  qualification.  It 
is  in  the  effort  to  render  definite  the  manifest 
ation  of  "Europeanism,"  in  its  various  phases, 
as  differentiated  from  "Americanism"  that  I 
have  written  these  thumb-nail  sketches.  They 
are  slight,  suggestive  and  unelaborate,  but 
there  may  be  some  who  find  in  them  a  measure 
of  truth  and  they  are  therefore  offered  to  my 
fellow  Americans  without  apology. 

I 

Between  the  Louvre  and  the  Arc  de  Tri- 
omphe  lies  the  essence  of  Paris,  for  there  it  is 
that  the  kingly  gardens  of  the  Tuileries  recline, 

115 


116  DEPRECIATIONS 

there  swings  from  north  to  south  the  royal 
Champs  Elysee,  and  there  as  well  are  scattered 
those  haunts  of  elegance  and  ugliness  and  vice, 
the  music  halls  for  which  Paris  is  famed. 
What  could  be  more  grotesque  than  a  five-min 
ute  walk  from  the  Venus  de  Milo  to  the  The 
atre  Marigny — from  the  contemplation  of  an 
tiquity's  ideal  of  love  to  modernity's  conception 
of  Lust?  Yet  this  is  possible  in  Paris. 

Paris  is  the  most  dignified  and  the  most 
ludicrous,  the  gayest  and  the  saddest  city  in  the 
world.  Great,  immortal  buildings;  great,  im 
mortal  art ;  petty,  stupid,  ugly  waste — all  in  one 
seething  mass,  making  a  city!  It  is  glorious, 
beautiful,  fruitless  and  futile,  constructed 
without  purpose,  tending  toward  no  end  and 
yet  fine  and  rapturous  and  inspired  as  nothing 
in  America  has  ever  been ! 

When  a  friend  of  mine  in  Paris  was  asked 
some  years  ago  what  he  thought  ought  to  be 
done  with  the  old  Palais  Royale,  which  all  read 
ers  of  Dumas  will  so  well  remember,  he  replied, 
"Why,  keep  it  as  a  hospital  for  the  people  who 
are  run  over  every  day  in  front  of  it  at  the  end 
of  the  Avenue  de  L'Opera.  They  need  never 


JOTTINGS  IN  EUROPE  117 

move  out  of  it:  they  can  buy  everything  they 
want  in  the  shops  underneath  and  they  can 
live  delightfully  in  the  apartments  upstairs." 
Street  accidents  do  not  worry  Paris,  and  old 
buildings  are  made  useful.  Watch  the  melee  of 
cabs  and  buses,  automobiles  and  business 
wagons  on  every  avenue  and  you  will  stop  won 
dering  why  the  population  is  decreasing. 

II 

Really  the  geographers  are  wrong.  England 
is  in  London  and  London  is  Boston  raised  to 
the  nth  power. 

Imagine  a  country  full  of  Bostonians!  Of 
course,  there  are  other  types — as  there  are  in 
Boston.  There  is  Keir  Hardie,  M.  P.,  for  in 
stance.  There  are  the  Celts,  ranging  all  the 
way  from  Bernard  Shaw  and  George  Moore  to 
William  Butler  Yeats.  Besides  that  there  are 
Lord  Rothschild,  Mrs.  Pankhurst  and  D'Al- 
bert  Chevalier.  But  Boston,  one  must  not  for 
get,  has  its  B.  O.  Flower  and  Governor  Foss. 
England  at  heart  has  become  a  perfected, 
standardized  New  England.  I  say  this  advised 
ly,  for  it  is  only  in  recent  years  that  the  gizzard 
has  gone  out  of  Britain.  There  was  a  time 


118  DEPRECIATIONS 

when  its  people  ate  beef,  drank  small  beer 
(whatever  that  may  be)  and  knew  what  they 
wanted  and  how  to  get  it — or  at  least  go  about 
getting  it.  Now  it  is  simply  a  question  of  more 
warships  than  your  neighbor  and  trust  to  luck. 
As  Mr.  Frank  Harris  put  it  in  speaking  of 
King  George's  rehearsals,  at  a  festive,  con 
versational  luncheon  to  which  he  invited  me, 
"You  can't  imagine  William  the  Conqueror 
being  taught  how  he  should  be  crowned." 
That  witty  man  alleges,  moreover,  that  several 
coronets  threatened  to  depart  from  the  semi- 
royal  heads  on  which  they  were  ensconced  at 
the  most  recent  ceremony  and  had  to  be  manip 
ulated  to  stay  on. 

Yet,  the  English  are  attractive.  They  have 
the  attraction  for  us  that  a  full  blooded  bull 
must  have  for  an  overworked  kyute  with  a 
can  tied  on  his  tail  that  he's  afraid  of  banging 
every  time  he  moves.  Englishmen  know  what 
to  do.  More  importantly,  they  know  (what 
few  Americans  even  realize)  what  not  to  do. 
We  are  brazen  in  the  face  of  Hell— and 
Heaven.  The  Englishman  is  more  critical — 
of  himself.  He  prefers  not  to  ram  his  head  in- 


JOTTINGS  IN  EUROPE  119 

to  a  wall  even  if  he  knows  it  isn't  stone  and 
that  he  can  get  through  it.  First  he  finds  out,  if 
he  can,  what's  on  the  other  side.  Englishmen 
are  courteous — even  to  "foreigners."  It  was 
not  in  England  that  a  hostess,  asking  her  guest 
at  tea  to  have  another  cake,  and  receiving  the 
reply,"No,  thanks,  I  have  had  two  already," 
answered,  "No — you've  had  five,  but  take  an 
other  anyway."  That  could  only  have  hap 
pened  in  New  York ! 

Englishmen,  like  Continentals,  know  how  to 
live.  Just  as  they  seriously  attempt  to  find  out 
what  to  do  and  quite  as  much  what  not  to  do, 
so  they  determine  what  they  want  and  as 
definitely  what  they  do  not  want.  It  is  not,  as 
with  us,  continually  a  case  of  living  up  to  some 
one  else's  income. 

Englishmen  hurry  almost  as  little  as  Ger 
mans.  At  five  they  have  tea,  whether  they 
make  a  fortune  or  lose  one,  and  nothing  but 
a  theatre  engagement  (or  poverty)  prevents 
their  two-hour  dinner  at  eight. 

There  is  a  tale  told  of  an  Englishman  (and 
not  by  an  idiot)  who,  arriving  in  New  York, 
was  taken  in  the  subway  by  a  friend.  They 


120  DEPRECIATIONS 

boarded  a  local,  changed  to  an  express,  and  re 
turned  to  a  local,  all  on  the  way  to  their  des 
tination.  The  return  trip  was  made  in  the  same 
manner,  hurrying  all  the  time  and  running 
most  of  it.  "Why,"  asked  the  "foreigner," 
out  of  breath,  "why  do  you  run  about  this 
way?"  "Come  on/'  cried  the  New  Yorker 
excitedly,  "I  save  two  minutes !"  "But  what," 
was  the  sane  reply,  "what  do  you  do  with  the 
two  minutes?" 

Who  of  us  in  America  knows  what  he  does 
with  the  minutes  ?  We  have  no  more  idea  what 
we  do  with  the  dollars.  We  spend  them,  we 
waste  them,  we  throw  them  away  on  things 
that  tire  us.  We  used  to  accomplish  mighty 
physical  things.  We  mastered  a  Continent. 
We  created  greater  wealth  than  had  ever  been 
dreamed  of  in  the  world.  Now  that  we  can 
not  keep  up  with  the  pace  in  accomplishment, 
we  take  it  out  in  hurrying. 

Ill 

Italy  is  the  land  of  love,  listlessness  and  Last 
Suppers.  •  It  also  possesses  excellent  patisserie 
and  very  poor  railways.  It  has  been  called, 
at  various  times,  by  folk  more  or  less  imagin 
ative  or  given  to  indigestion,  "the  land  of  art," 


JOTTINGS  IN  EUROPE  121 

"the  land  of  history,"  and  "the  land  of  pov 
erty." 

Italy  has  a  number  of  old  cathedrals,  which 
are  left  standing  because  their  steps  furnish 
suitable  resting  places  for  venders  of  postcards, 
who  saunter  forth  gayly  in  droves  from  unde 
tected  corners  as  soon  as  a  foreigner  is  found 
gazing  at  "their"  building.  There  are  old  wom 
en  whose  backs  have  taken  on  a  picturesque 
curve  that  one  can  conceive  being  the  fashion 
in  a  hundred  years ;  there  are  middle-aged  men 
who  pretend  to  speak  French  for  the  sake  of 
Americans  who  pretend  to  understand  it;  then 
occasionally  there  is  a  young  boy  who  is  still 
naive  enough  to  hope  to  sell  something  because 
someone  wants  it.  Once  permit  these  vampires 
to  come  within  a  dozen  yards  and  they  hold 
you  with  their  cries  and  vociferations.  Escape 
is  never  afforded  unless  one  is  clever  at  pre 
tending  to  be  insane  and  then  venders  will  gig 
gle,  pretend  to  be  frightened  and  go  away  sat 
isfied.  You  see  it  is  all  a  matter  of  pretense 
everywhere  in  Italy. 

In  purchasing  anything  it  is  necessary  to 
pretend  at  the  same  time  both  that  you  admire 


122  DEPRECIATIONS 

it  and  that  you  do  not  wish  to  buy  it.  If  the 
salesman  believes  you  do  not  admire  his  wares 
he  will  never  really  care  to  sell  them  to  you— 
though  he  may  try  with  what  seems  to  us  a 
good  deal  of  avidity.  He  is  always  interested, 
however,  in  making  you  live  up  to  your  own 
better  nature  (which  is  favorably  impressed 
with  his  goods)  and  if  he  succeeds  he  can  slap 
himself  on  the  back  ethically  as  well  as  artis 
tically. 

Love  in  Italy  is  like  sand  in  Sahara.     The 
country  has  been  a  region  of  romance  for  so 
many  years  that  it  takes  it  as  a  matter  of 
course.     In  America  we  are  afraid  of  love, 
in  England  they  are  ashamed  of  it,  in  Germany 
they  are  obsessed  with  it,  and  in  Italy  they  are 
tired  of  it.     Of  course,  the  people  go  right  on 
loving  and  marrying,  cohabiting  and  procreat 
ing,  but  it  is  simply  a  matter  of  habit.     The 
prostitutes  are  even  more  business-like  than 
New  York's.     As  for  the  listlessness  of  Italy, 
that  is  a  matter  of  genuine  intellectual  convic 
tion.    It  is  not  really  warm  in  Italy.    Milan -in 
summer  is  considerably  cooler  than  Boston,  and 
even  Rome  rarely  rivals  New  Orleans  in  dia 
bolic  temperatures.     It  is  simply  that  the  Ital- 


JOTTINGS  IN  EUROPE  123 

ians  do  not  believe  in  our  methods  and  -man 
ners.  They  eat  fully  and  so  they  must  give 
themselves  opportunity  for  digestion.  Their 
cathedrals  and  mural  decorations  support 
many  of  them  and  a  large  number  of  others 
make  remarkable  beverages  and  foodstuffs 
with  things  they  pick  up  in  the  streets.  I  think 
comparatively  few  Italians  admire  great  art, 
though  all  of  them  admire  other  people's  admir 
ation  for  it.  That  is  a  signal  difference  between 
most  Europeans  and  all  Americans,  none  .of 
whom  ever  admire  anything  that  they  do  not 
possess  or  are  not  on  the  way  to  possessing. 

Italy  owns  about  a  thousand  "Last  Suppers." 
Some  of  them  are  painted  on  walls. or  ceilings 
while  others  are  chopped  up  and  put 
into  frames.  Many  of  them  look  far('better  on 
post-cards  than  in  the  originals  and  none  of 
the  painters  have  supplied  the  divine  assem 
blage  with  any  dietary  superfluities.  Holbein, 
with  true  German  generosity,  was  quite  the  first 
to  victual  the  table  as  he  who  allowed  his  head 
to  be  bathed  in  costly  ointment  would  cer 
tainly  have  had  it. 

The  great  "Last  Supper"  of  Leonardo  da 


124  DEPRECIATIONS 

Vinci,  the  glorious  composition  and  drawing 
of  which  is  ardently  admired  by  every  one  who 
has  not  seen  it  in  the  original,  is  in  a  condition 
of  almost  complete  dissolution.  Strangers 
still  go  out  to  the  church  of  Sta.  Maria  Delia 
Grazia,  however,  and  two  old  women  are  per 
mitted  to  receive  them,  and  their  tips,  while 
white  clothed  monks  wander  about  interest 
ingly  whenever  there  is  any  excuse  for  doing 
so — though  the  da  Vinci  section  itself  is  in  the 
control  of  the  Government. 

The  poor  live  very  inexpensively  in  Italy 
and  the  rich  extravagantly.  There  are  large 
private  dwellings  of  the  character  of  Carnegie's 
or  the  Vanderbilts'  in  New  York  (though  not 
generally  all  of  stone)  and  the  best  hotels  serve 
perhaps  the  finest  tables  d'hote  in  the  world. 
Life  in  the  larger  cities  is  not  unlike  that  of 
London  and  Berlin  though  there  is  far  less 
interest  in  intellectual  pursuits.  On  the  other 
hand,  Italians  are  pious  frivolously  while  Paris 
ians  and  Germans  are  impious  religiously. 

IV 

It  may  be  said  that  because  Germans  do  not 
live  any  longer  than  Americans  they  do  not 


JOTTINGS  IN  EUROPE  125 

live  so  much.  But,  after  all,  one  lives  only  as 
one  is  conscious  of  living,  and  we  Americans 
hurry  about  in  a  condition  of  semi-conscious 
ness  that  is  not  life.  We  have;no  repose  and 
therefore  little  thought.  Our  working  classes 
are  without  leisure  and  our  leisure  classes  are 
too  busy  searching  for  amusement  to  achieve 
happiness. 

Life  to  most  people — or  happiness  in  life- 
signifies  simply  the  going  from  one  agreeable 
sensation  to  another  in  quick  and  interesting- 
succession.  The  only  desires  of  the  average 
man  are  "life"  and  luxury  and  love.  The  Ger 
mans  satisfy  these  interests — or  lusts,  if  you 
must  call  them  so.  We  do  not.  It  is  not  that 
we  crave  their  satisfaction  the  less.  We  do 
not  satisfy  our  desire  for  life  because  we  do 
not  understand  it,  nor  our  desire  for  luxury 
because,  being  ashamed  of  it,  we  become  crude 
in  seeking  its  satisfaction,  nor  our  desire  for 
love,  because  that  frightens  us  out  of  our  wits. 

Most/ true  Americans  are  Puritans  and  all 
Puritans  are  perverts.  Their  perversion  con 
sists  in  a  super-sex-consciousness  turned  in 
and  against  itself.  Just  as  only  those  greatly 


126  DEPRECIATIONS 

and  emotionally  inclined  toward  sex,  adopt  that 
subject  as  their  intellectual  specialty,  so  only 
those  insanely  obsessed  with  sex  crusade 
against  it. 

The  intelligent  German  does  his  work  calmly 
and  with  precision.  He  lives  in  the  same  man 
ner.  ,  He  eats  sufficiently  and  well;  he  rests 
two  hours  in  the  middle  of  the  day;  and  he 
drinks  his  beer,  fearlessly,  quietly  and  in 
offensively.  There  are  no  saloons  in  Germany, 
though  there  are  beer  gardens  everywhere. 
Whiskey  is  very  unpopular,  and  drunkenness 
exceedingly  uncommon. 

V 

A  glacial  scene  of  snow  and  ice,  stretching 
above  vaporous  clouds  on  every  hand,  and  join 
ing  below  with  rocky  cliffs  and  green  hillocks 
with  sheep  upon  them — just  such  a  scene  as  one 
sees  on  any-  moderately  clear  day  from  the 
Kleine  Scheidegg — is  as  typical  of  Switzer 
land  as  anything,  save  one,  could  be.  That  one 
thing  is  the  glass-clad  dining  porch  of  any  good 
hotel  in  Basel  or  Lucerne  or  Interlaken,  with  its 
tables  populated  side  by  side,  with  a  German 
family  of  six,  a  Frenchman  and  his  mistress 


JOTTINGS  IN  EUROPE  127 

(or  even  possibly  his  wife!),  an  English  bro 
ther  and  sister,  Russian  girls  out  for  a  holiday, 
American  nouveaux  riches  bent  on  living  up  to 
their  incomes,  and  an  Italian  laborer  or  noble 
men — it  is  seldom  apparent  which. 

Switzerland  is  the  land  of  inclusiveness  and 
therefore  of  Democracy.  One  cannot  remain 
a  snob  eight  thousand  feet  above  sea  level,  when 
one's  head  is  buzzing  and  one's  nose  threatens 
a  hemorrhage.  Just  as  little  can  one  "slight" 
one's  neighbor  when  the  latter  is  some  sort  of 
European  linguist  while  oneself  is  struggling 
with  forgotten  German  genders  and  a  never 
learned  vocabulary  of  French.  English  is 
understood — but  vaguely,  doubtfully,  and  quite 
above  all,  most  expensively.  Let  anyone  be 
known  as  an  American  and  his  room  rent  goes 
up  two  francs,  while  tips  that  would  'have 
been  accepted  smilingly,  with  thanks,  are 
scornfully  pocketed  with  evident  dissatis 
faction. 

It  is  a  curse  for  any  but  the  rich  to  be  Amer 
icans  in  Switzerland.  German  and  French 
lend  themselves  to  vociferous  objection — "Don- 
nerwetter"  or  "Fils  d'un  chien"  sound  con 
vincing — but  English  is  for  apologetic,  tern- 


128  DEPRECIATIONS 

perate  acceptance  only.  He  who  rebukes  a 
cabman  in  New  Yorkese  is  laughed  at — or 
growled  upon.  A  foreign  language,  well- 
spoken,  deducts  twenty  per  cent  from  one's  ex 
penses. 

There  are  Kursaals  in  Switzerland  that  may 
remind  those  who  have  been  there  of  Monte 
Carlo.  For  a  couple  of  francs  one  can  see  gam 
ing  tables  and  listen  to  mild  lewdness  and  poor 
music.  There  are  the  cries  of  "Fait  le  jeu, 
messieurs/'  the  raking  of  the  spoils;  the 
watchers,  bored  but  slyly  observant;  the  money 
changers,  the  crowds  of  every  sort  and  nation 
ality,  the  rolling  balls,  the  lights,  but  none  of 
the  sorrow  and  the  tragedy  of  the  great  gam 
bling  centers.  One  enjoys  the  ineffable  sensa 
tion  of  being  wicked  for  a  franc !  Five  francs  is 
the  limit  and  few  are  wild  enough  to  play  it. 
Then  for  those  who  prefer  to  spend,  rather 
than  lose,  money  there  are  the  French  musical 
comedies  with  their  laughable  indecency,  their 
picturesque  costumes,  their  golden  haired  girls 
and  pleasing  dearth  of  chorus  men — com 
pared  to  our  New  York  pandering  to  the  mat 
inee  girl.  Do  we  not  show  by  the  presence  of 


JOTTINGS  IN  EUROPE  129 

these  droves  of  males  upon  the  American  musi 
cal  comedy  stage  more  than  by  anything  else, 
the  American's  subservience  to  woman? 
European  men  please  themselves;  they  spend 
their  own  money  with  their  wives  (instead  of 
working  ^themselves  to  death  for  them),  they 
eat  well  and  quietly,  smoke  when  they  please 
and  drink  in  moderation — none  of  which  pre 
vents  a  great  many  of  therefrom  believing  in 
woman's  right  to  equality  and  none  of  which 
prevents  them  from  retaining  their  women's 
respect,  consideration  and  love.  y 

VI 

Paris  and  London  are  cities  that  have  per 
sonalities.  Berlin  would  have  had  if  the  Kai 
ser  had  not  tampered  with  its  development 
in  his  attempt  to  create  a  second  Paris.  The 
"gaiety"  of  Berlin  is  a  weighty,  conscious  af 
fair  like  the  gaiety  of  an  elephant  who  has 
been  living  with  baboons. 

New  York,  too,  may  possess  ^ts  deeply  per 
sonal  factor.  The  poets  have  written  of  its 
clanging  elevated  railways,  its  roaring  subways, 
its  dazzling  skyscrapers,  jts  dirt,  delightful- 


130  DEPRECIATIONS 

ness,  commerce,  wealth  and  poverty.  But  the 
European  capitals  are  like  the  European  char 
acter  :  they  are  established,  settled ,  and  un 
changing.  The  German  is  dull,  studious  and 
effective;  the  Frenchman  sprightly,  faithless 
and  negligent;  the  Englishmen  courteous, 
cold  and  egotistic.  London  is  cold,  Paris  is 
hot;  London  is  busy  and  preoccupied,  Paris  is 
lustful,  listless  and  loquacious. 

London  streets  are  a  mass  of  busses ;  London 
theatres  a  mass  of  shirt  bosoms  and  London 
clubs  a  mass  of  yawns.  Business  is  more  re 
poseful  in  Paris  than  society  is  in  London. 
Both  are  a  bore  in  Berlin. 

It  is  difficult  to  describe  what  makes  the 
Englishman  cry  "Dear  old  London !"  when  he 
comes  in  at  Paddington — but  he  means  it.  If 
it  is  evening,  he  sees  the  lights,  lights,  lights 
on  every  side  along  the  streets,  the  moving 
trams  and  the  dashing  busses,  the  dim,  grey, 
governmental  buildings  and  the  respectful 
poor.  In  the  daylight  all  is  quick  with  life— 
and  without  hurry. 

There  are  those  who  dislike  the  commercial 
quality  of  London,  who  detest  the  miles  of 
streets  lined  with  small  shops.  But  business 


JOTTINGS  IN  EUROPE  131 

in  London  has  an  inoffensive  air;  it  does  not 
intrude  itself,  and  there  are  other  things. 
Every  few  streets,  in  the  midst  of  the  petty 
everyday,  is  some  huge  building,  redolent  with 
history:  Westminster  Abbey,  the  Houses  of 
Parliament,  Buckingham  Palace,  the  British 
Museum  and  the  National  Gallery  are  only  the 
most  important  and  impressive  of  a  hundred. 
You  cannot  find  such  in  America.  Nor  have 
we  the  pretty  little  squares  that  crop  up  every 
where,  with  their  inevitable  trees  and  grass 
and  flower  beds. 

Paris,  in  sunny  France,  is  not  so  green. 
Paris  has  not  the  touch  of  the  "Beyond."  Like 
the  French  themselves  it  is  sprightly  and  ob 
vious,  with  little  reserve  power.  Shudder  once 
or  twice  at  the  impressiveness  of  the  Louvre, 
give  a  dozen  hours'  interest  to  Notre  Dame  and 
the  Pantheon,  see  three  pictures  in  the  Lux 
embourg,  walk  in  the  Bois,  the  Avenue  de 
1'Opera  and  the  Quartier,  and  Paris  is  a  mys 
tery  made  manifest.  There  is  something  of 
the  infinite  in  London;  something  of  the  eter 
nal,  of  the  universal  and  the  inexpressible. 

VII 
The  churches,  like  the  other  amusements  of 


132  DEPRECIATIONS 

Europe,  differ  considerably  one  from  another. 
In  Paris,  they  are  generally  places  whither  one 
comes  to  pray  and  whence  one  goes  to  scoff. 

The  small  Paris  churches  have  a  greater 
number  of  grotesque  figures  of  the  Virgin  than 
an  imaginative  American  could  have  conceived 
existent  in  the  world.  Some  have  blue  gowns 
and  red  noses,  others  are  clothed  in  golden 
raiment  fit  for  the  Bal  Bullier. 

In  London  and  Berlin,  where  churches  are 
free  and  Protestant,  the  people  go  in  greater 
numbers  to  the  theatres,  operas  and  concerts. 
That  may  be  a  reason  for  the  excellence  of 
German  music  and  English  stage-management. 
Not  that  the  Munich  level  is  everywhere  pre 
served  in  Germany :  in  Frankfurt  one  can  see 
as  bad  a  performance  of  Italian  opera  as  one 
pleases.  Nor  are  the  theatres  of  London  run 
upon  the  level  of  the  Kings  way,  where  that  ex 
traordinary  master  of  finesse  in  dialog  and  in 
terpretation,  Granville  Barker,  holds  hour- 
long  discussions  with  his  casts  during  time 
that  is  generally  spent  by  directors  in  howling 
out  commands.  Not  another  manager  any 
where  could  have  given  "Fanny's  First  Play" 


JOTTINGS  IN  EUROPE  133 

as  London  had  it  for  a  year  and  a  half,  nor 
has  anyone  produced  "The  Winter's  Tale/'  as 
it  appeared  in  England  a  season  later.  But  one 
can  see  an  average  play  handled  with  thor 
ough  adequacy  any  night  in  London,  while  in 
New  York  one  must  often  choose  to  see  a  bet 
ter  play  miserably  murdered.  In  Berlin  at  the 
Kleines  or  Deutches  Theaters  or  several  others, 
one  sees  excellent  work  excellently  done.  It 
is,  I  suppose,  because  the  middle  class,  omitting 
hurry  from  its  program,  has  time  not  only  to 
eat  and  drink  beer,  but  also  to  think,  read  and 
develop  good  taste. 

VIII 

Abroad  vice  stalks  abroad.  Here  we  sup 
pose  most  other  people  live  quite  virtuously. 
We  are  perfectly  aware  that  we  ourselves  have 
our  occasional  glasses  of  beer,  that  we  puff 
our  sustaining  pipes,  but  we  don't  tell  others 
much  about  what  we  do  or  believe  for  fear  of 
hurting  them  and  their  opinion  of  us. 

Continental  Europe  looks  at  these  things 
quite  differently.  There  it  is  not  considered 
quite  the  same  offense  for  a  man  and  a  woman 
to  seek  happiness  together  without  consulting 


134  DEPRECIATIONS 

a  minister  or  magistrate,  as  for  a  man  to  stran 
gle  his  brother,  poison  his  mother  and  shoot 
the  policeman  who  comes  to  arrest  him.  As 
Dr.  W.  J.  Robinson  put  it:  "We  in  America  are 
continually  confusing  vice  with  crime/'  Euro 
peans  are  in  advance  of  us  in  realizing  the  dif 
ference. 

There  is,  I  suppose,  less  drunkeness  in 
Switzerland  than  in  any  other  country  on 
earth.  But  Switzerland  is  far  from  being  a 
Prohibition  state,  for  drinking  there  is  almost 
universal.  The  secret  is  simply  that  in  Swit 
zerland  light,  slight  intoxicants  are  much  en 
couraged  and  sparingly  taxed,  and  so  the  peo 
ple  feel  no  need  for  the  expensive,  heavily  tar 
iffed  whiskey,  brandy  and  gin.  Likewise,  in 
Switzerland,  perversions  of  our  natural  in 
stincts  exist  to  but  a  very  limited  extent,  though 
of  laws  against  them  there  are  none. 

Our  total  failure  to  cope  with  the  drinking 
problem  in  the  United  States,  Germany's  total 
failure,  by  means  of  barbarous  laws,  to  solve 
its  sex  difficulties,  must  convince  us  at  last  that 
man's  most  intimate  and  individual  desires 
cannot  be  curbed  or  broken  by  governmental 
action.  The  Germans  have  learned  this  and 


JOTTINGS  IN  EUROPE  135 

their  laws  will  be  repealed.  We  ourselves  must 
soon  view  serious  public  need,  as  the  only  jus 
tification  of  state  interference  with  individual 
freedom. 

IX 

I  sat  on  the  deck  of  a  great  German  liner, 
and  I  was  filled  with  the  essence  of  a  hundred 
colorful  experiences  in  six  European  countries, 
and  mellowed,  perhaps  a  little  saddened,  by  the 
perfect  calm  of  the  sealife  with  its  lack  of  let 
ters,  telephones,  subways,  clocks,  dirt,  and 
business  thoughts.  There  I  wrote  these  rough 
hewn  stanzas: 

We  move  so  tenderly 

Across  the  sea 

That  surely  God  can  scarcely  hear. 

Back  from  our  bow 

We  toss  the  great  blue  ocean 

So  calmly,  quietly,  that  now 

With  scarce  a  motion 

The  foam  becomes  a  cloud 

Wrapping  our  stern  up  in  a  trembling  shroud. 

There  is  no  fear, 


*36  DEPRECIATIONS 

For  all  is  calm,  warm  blue 

Ensheathed  in  some 

Strange,  warm,  yet  greying  sunlight. 

So  little  motion  is  there  in  the  sea 

That  from  us,  too, 

Activity,  ambition,  hate  and  passion  flee, 

Our  spirits  soar 

And  we  become 

Half  less  than  men,  half  more. 

It  had  been  a  fascinating  trip  and  joyfully 
I  recalled  the  mighty  moments  of  which  every 
fine  experience  is  composed,  as  I  sat  in  the 
centre  of  my  three  deck-chairs,  two  of  them 
heaped  high  with  books  and  manuscript.  The 
homeward  travel  was  contributing  its  share  of 
pleasure,  particularly  in  its  possibilities  of  ac 
quaintance  with  characters  typical,  I  suppose, 
of  all  ocean  voyages,  but  interesting  no  less. 

There  was  quaint  young  Miss  French  of  an 
exotic  type  so  very  different  in  Americans  from 
its  evidence  in  European  women.  With  us  it 
is  queerly  often  chained  to  Puritanism,  and 
very  seldom  visualized  in  vice.  Often,  in  both 
cases,  it  is  the  effect  of  a  too  unmixed  ancestry, 


JOTTINGS  IN  EUROPE  137 

but  here  it  seldom  represents  an  effort  at  ar 
tistic  living. 

Americans  rarely  live  literature  and  that  is 
one  of  the  reasons  our  books  are  so  bad.  We 
do  not  believe  our  authors ;  we  look  to  them  for 
amusement  or  information  but  never  for  judg 
ments.  Therefore  it  is  that  our  feminine  ex 
otics,  although  fine  and  gentle,  are  neither  sub 
tle  nor  artistic. 

So  it  was  that  these  primary,  appropriate 
characteristics  were  not  to  be  found  in  Ferle 
French.  With  an  instinct  for  individuality, 
she  was  prevented  by  fear  and  training  and 
inheritance  from  developing  more  than  a  sem 
blance  of  it.  There  were  in  her  consciousness 
her  parents'  obviously  frequent  warnings 
against  "experience";  the  training  of  a  "fin 
ishing  school" — one  of  those  institutions  which 
complete,  not  the  education  of  their  attendants, 
but  their  possibility  of  education — and  the  in 
heritance  of  a  good  American  ancestry.  There 
is  so  much  of  the  negative  in  such  a  type  that 
it  rarely  resorts  to  resistance  against  environ 
ment.  Miss  French's  mind  might  carry  her  to 
pastures  new,  to  fresh  associations  and  ideas 
and  undreamed  possibilities,  but  there  would 


138  DEPRECIATIONS 

always  be  the  long  arm,  not  of  coincidence,  but 
of  convention,  to  restrain  her.  American  ex 
otic  girls  are  almost  always  so :  there  is  not  in 
them  the  necessity  for  self-expression  that 
makes  some  European  women  able  to  establish 
themselves  as  imaginative  realists  in  the  midst 
of  our  world  of  unimaginative  romanticists. 
Instinct  and  power  are  completely  dissevered. 
Among  the  other  passengers  I  discovered 
Mrs.  Schumann,  who  appeared  morning  and 
evening  in  another  startling  gown,  but  always 
together  with  the  same  well-known  and  im 
pressive  German.  Knowing  that  they  were  not 
related,  all  the  passengers  attended  to  them 
and  conversed  about  them.  As  was  proper, 
Mrs.  Schumann  proved  to  be  the  sublimation 
of  the  dilettante:  in  touch  with  painting,  music 
and  the  drama,  but  deeply  touched  by  none. 
Her  gowns  were  art  objects.  Her  coiffure 
was  a  work  of  art.  Her  mind,  as  I  have  said 
of  George  Moore's,  was  the  student  of  her 
senses  and  her  senses  were  the  motive  power 
of  her  mind.  Never  commonplace,  never  fun 
damental,  always  interested,  but  with  a  mild 
skepticism,  she  cared  for  beauty  without  al 
lowing  it  to  act  quite  as  a  motive  power  or 


JOTTINGS  IN  EUROPE  139 

granting  it  a  prime  significance.  I  asked  if  she 
had  written  anything.  "Stories,  once  or 
twice/7  I  was  informed,  "I  do  not  like  most 
poetry;  I  am  too  real."  But  there  was  in 
sufficient  power  of  expression  and  not  the  will 
ingness  to  labor.  Life  was  enough,  and  life 
to  her  was  clear  and  clever  prose;  it  was  un 
necessary  for  her  to  write  in  either  form. 

The  commonplace  types  offered  themselves 
for  inspection — and  attention :  teachers  out  for 
their  first  great  holiday;  business  men,  always 
true  to  their  trade,  even  in  a  week  of  enforced 
idleness;  college  girls,  masculinized  and  ath 
letic,  but  as  ineffectual  as  the  women  of  earlier 
generations — all  the  fatuous  world  of  medioc 
rity,  unenlivened,  uninspired  by  the  vastness, 
the  calmness,  the  sunniness,  the  eternal  glory 
of  being  afloat  on  a  vacant  water-world. 

I  turned  back  thoughtfully  to  my  visits  to 
resplendent  feminae  of  the  old  world. 

There  wras  dark  vibrant  Hortense,  whom  I 
found  in  Switzerland — a  brown  bundle  of  ar 
tistic  genius  wandering  across  Europe  with  a 
kindly  old  mother,  who  gave  her  no  chance 
for  activity.  Mistress  of  three  languages,  she 
was  conversationally  starved.  Powerful  with 


140  DEPRECIATIONS 

pencil  and  brush,  she  had  been  kept  from  work 
to  entertain  her  parent,  and  confined  to  the  po 
lite,  extravagant  inanities,  first  in  Berlin,  then 
on  the  Riviera,  now  in  Switzerland.  I  came, 
and  we  feasted  intellectually  together  for  three 
entire  days.  I  have  never  talked  so  much. 
We  played  upon  each  other's  mental  pianos 
whole  symphonies  of  chatter  about  all  things 
imaginable :  art  and  literature  and  politics  and 
personalities  and  problems  and  the  inevitable 
Sex.  I  think  we  Americans  talk  more  of  sex 
than  any  nation  on  the  earth;  abroad  they  are 
less  afraid  of  it  and  so  they  have  better  means 
of  expression. 

In  London,  I  had  left  Deidre  and  Maire, 
lovely  goddesses  from  over  the  Irish  Sea. 
Deidre,  despite  her  name  with  its  centuries  of 
sorrowful  associations,  was  a  gladsome  Irish 
lassie,  sunny  and  brave,  with  a  bit  of  religion 
and  traditionalism  to  mellow  her.  Maire  was 
a  keen  mind  set  behind  a  rarely  lovely  physiog 
nomy.  She  thought,  quite  interestingly,  that 
women  often  respond  to  our  male  emotional 
demands  in  order  to  gain  the  fruits  of  men's 
mentality.  Her  mind  was  analytic  and  she 
craved  men's  syntheses  so  that  she  could  dis- 


JOTTINGS  IN  EUROPE  141 

sect  them.  That  is  why,  more  than  for  any 
other  reason,  Maire  was  not  great  in  her  art 
of  acting.  She  understood  her  parts  so  well 
she  could  never  be  hypnotized  by  them.  The 
dramatist's  must  be  a  conscious  intellect,  but 
the  actor  fails  unless  he  is  much  of  the  mys 
tic. 

X 

Because  the  working  class  in  Germany  is 
without  dignity  the  upper  classes  are  brilliant 
with  formalities.  The  differentiation  is  ex 
treme.  The  poor,  for  example,  never  hesitate 
to  accept  tips.  Even  conductors  are  glad  to 
have  an  extra  Pfennig  with  your  fare.  The 
man  who  enlightens  you  about  locations  pock 
ets  with  calmness  any  little  trifle  you  are  good1 
enough  to  bestow.  Only  the  porters  and 
Gepaecktraeger  frown  and  vociferously  remon 
strate  if  you  give  them  too  little. 

But  the  rich— the  official  classes— they  are 
glorious!  When  you  visit  a  German  govern 
ment  official,  your  card  is  handed  through  three 
porters,  and  you  yourself  through  as  many 
doorways.  Finally  you  come  into  the  benign 
presence  and  a  portrait  of  the  Emperor  glares 
superciliously  at  your  crude  Americanism. 


142  DEPRECIATIONS 

The  Excellent  (or  perhaps  only  Regierungs- 
rat)  bows  slowly  and  low,  offers  you  his  hand, 
bows  once  more,  you  find  yourself  seated  and 
the  conference  begins.  At  its  end  there  is  a 
mutual  bowing,  another  handshake,  still  an 
other  bowing  and  "Auf  Wiedersehen" 

Fortunately,  I  met  my  most  impressive  Ger 
man  acquaintances  under  more  favorable  cir 
cumstances.  It  would  have  been  more  than  my 
American  simplicity  could  stand  to  have  been 
treated  officially  by  Count  von  Bernstorff  only 
two  days  from  New  York,  even  on  a  summer 
sea;  and  Professor  Haeckel,  being  simple  and 
fine  and  revolutionary  himself,  met  me  as  an 
American  comrade  who  needed  no  formality. 

Bernstorff  is  a  diplomat  of  the  new  sort — 
school  one  might  say,  I  suppose.  The  hour 
I  met  him  we  stood  on  deck  watching  the  por 
poises  jump  and  dive,  sail  a  few  feet  under 
water  and  then  cut  through  to  the  surface 
again.  "One  wonders  why  they  act  that  way," 
said  Germany's  Ambassador,  "but  then  one 
never  can  tell  why  the  porpoise  'jumps  without 
being  a  porpoise."  The  political  philosophy  of 
the  man  was  there:  there  must  be  thorough 
understanding  without  recrimination.  He  was 


JOTTINGS  IN  EUROPE  143 

critical  of  details  in  the  present  order,  but  he 
scarcely  questioned  its  fundamentals. 

Bristling  moustaches,  a  fine  carriage  and 
courtesy,  yet  a  stiffness  and  brusqueness  to 
some,  together  with  the  definiteness  of  thor 
ough  masculinity  were  the  major  apparent 
characteristics  of  the  man.  A  universal  kind 
liness  was  not  to  be  looked  for,  but  neither  was 
there  the  smooth  perfection  of  the  Disraeli 
type.  Modern  diplomacy  is  clear  cut.  It  de 
pends  less  on  finesse;  not  so  much  upon  doing 
things  as  knowing  when  not  to  do  them.  "Our 
young  men  get  into  trouble  by  talking  too 
much,"  he  said.  "When  we  are  quoted  we 
have  to  deny  everything." 

Vast  silences  had  become  the  keynote  of  his 
conversation;  eternal  care,  eternal  vigilance 
must  have  been  his  self  imposed  rule  of  con 
duct. 

Professor  Haeckel  was  so  very  different:  a 
gentle,  white-bearded  radical,  odorous  with  old- 
worldliness. 

We  all  have  intimates  among  those  pedantic 
folk  who  entertain  their  friends  by  choosing 
from  the  world's  great  men  and  women  him 
or  her  whom  they  regard  as  the  greatest  sci- 


144  DEPRECIATIONS 

entist,  painter,  writer  or  sovereign  in  any  par 
ticular  period  of  the  world's  history.  We  have 
probably  ourselves,  each  of  us,  been  asked  to 
name  men  whom  we  would  place  among  the 
unquestionably  great.  I  attempted  to  do  as 
much  not  long  ago  and  found  it  quite  impos 
sible  to  omit  the  name  of  Haeckel  from  con 
temporary  science  and  philosophy.  In  the  lat 
ter  field,  he  surely  ranks  with  James  and  Berg- 
son  and  H.  G.  Wells,  even  though  he  is  not  so 
liberally  expressive  of  the  special  standpoint  of 
our  generation;  as  a  biologist  he  comes  close 
to  Darwin  and  is  peerless  among  the  men  of 
his  own  time. 

One  hesitates,  very  properly,  to  make  affirm 
ations  of  this  sort.  But  those  of  which  I  am 
guilty  force  themselves  upon  any  of  us:  they 
are  among  those  self-evident  generalizations 
which  are  ripe  for  acceptance. 

Thus  it  is  that  most  of  us  accept  Haeckel  as 
a  tremendous  figure  in  the  modern  world,  and 
we  accept  him  silently,  knowing  little  about 
him,  having  read  little  of  his  work.  We  learn 
extensively,  each  year  more  and  more,  of  the 
personality,  of  the  manner  of  working  of  the 


JOTTINGS  IN  EUROPE  145 

other  masters  of  the  century:  Rodin,  Strauss, 
Shaw,  Maeterlinck,  Zuloaga  and  the  rest.  But 
Haeckel  has  remained  deeply  obscured  and  sev 
ered  from  the  world  in  the  tiny  village  of  Jena 
where  pilgrims  come  once,  or  perhaps  twice,  a 
week,  from  anywhere  across  the  world,  to 
touch  hands  and  consciousness  with  the  mas 
ter. 

Jena  is  a  village  in  which  we  should  nat 
urally  picture  Haeckel:  it  is  too  quaintly  old 
for  a  genuine  modern,  too  filled  with  age-old 
atmosphere,  too  lacking  in  the  obvious  im 
provements  of  twenty  years.  But  Jena  is  a 
town  wherein  we  can  imagine  a  radical  of  the 
last  generation  growing  from  boyhood  into 
manhood,  marrying,  settling  down  after  trav 
eling  around  the  world  for  years,  for  the  last 
quarter  of  his  century  of  life,  in  the  unchanged 
house  where  he  may  first  have  dreamed  of  the 
vast  and  glittering  immortalities  that  have 
come  into  his  mind  and  have  been  given  to  the 
world. 

I  was  thrilled,  merely  to  be  in  Jena,  where 
strangely  colored  frame  and  stucco  houses 
bolstered  each  other  in  little  narrow  streets  that 
had  never  been  altered  since  their  Medieval 


146  DEPRECIATIONS 

birth.  I  lived  in  a  hotel  that  had  been  the 
stopping  place  of  Martin  Luther,  and  nearby 
were  the  houses  where  Schiller  and  Goethe  had 
dwelt.  I  had  come  for  the  purpose  of  seeing 
Haeckel ;  a  friend  had  telegraphed  to  him  and 
so  we  determined  to  go  at  once.  Our  car 
riage  drove  through  the  market-place  and 
passed  a  picturesque  old  inn  where  a  dozen  stu 
dents  in  variegated  caps  (according  to  their 
fraternities)  had  appropriated  the  barmaid  and 
were  drinking,  singing,  and  frolicking  in  the 
yard.  One  of  them  would  bawl  out  a  German 
chorus  now  and  then,  but  no  one  minded,  it 
was  quite  the  regular  thing. 

When  we  alighted  at  the  narrow  cobbled 
lane  on  which  Haeckel  has  lived  for  half  a 
century,  we  were  unable  to  find  No.  7,  so  we 
had  to  inquire  at  No.  13. 

"Oh,  sie  wollen  Herrn  Professor  Haeckel?" 
exclaimed  the  woman.  Her  voice  glowed  with 
a  warmth  that  Americans,  having  no  great 
men,  seldom  possess. 

Haeckel's  little  house  is  not  quite  altogether 
without  change.  Going  into  the  hall  one  finds 
a  resplendent,  black,  cast-iron  stove  that  can 


JOTTINGS  IN  EUROPE  147 

not  date  back  earlier  than  1890,  but  this  has 
flounced  down  in  the  midst  of  a  hallway  that 
surely  has  not  been  more  than  painted  in  half 
a  century.  But  one  gains  something  of  the 
ancientness  of  spirit,  to  counteract  the  effect  of 
the  stove,  from  a  ten  minute  walk  down  the  nar 
row,  pebbly  lane  on  which  the  house  has  its 
only  exit.  Everything  but  the  stove  is  gen 
uinely  old,  even  to  the  little  waiting  maid  who 
tells  you  "Excellenz  wird  sofort  kommen"  and 
climbs  with  you  into  the  library  where  you 
spend  ten  minutes  looking  at  a  set  of  Goethe, 
a  hundred  or  so  travel  books  and  the  shelf  of 
Haeckel's  volumes  set  between  flaming  water 
colors  that  he  made  in  biological  moments  in 
the  tropics.  There,  also,  you  may  see  the 
weird,  grey  picture,  reproduced  so  often  all 
over  the  world,  of  Gabriel  Max's  missing  link 
family,  or  whatever  it  is  called.  It  depends 
greatly  upon  your  mood  whether  you  take  the 
three  figures  to  be  monkeys  or  men.  No  one 
can  tell  for  certain  which  they  more  resemble. 
Haeckel  came  after  a  wait  of  fifteen  min 
utes.  We  looked  at  each  other  and  were 
friends.  Haeckel  is  seventy-eight.  He  is 
white-haired,  white-bearded,  and  his  blue  eyes 


148  DEPRECIATIONS 

have  the  twinkle  of  one  who  has  worked  hard 
and  calmly,  keeping  his  sense  of  humor  and  yet 
not   allowing  it  to   interfere  with  his  work. 
Only  the  day  before  he  had  been  visited  by 
an  East  Indian  who  asked  permission  to  trans 
late  The  Riddle  of  the  Universe   into   Hin 
doo  and  who  promised  the  sale  of  a  million 
copies  in  India — althought  there  had  been  only 
a   hundred   thousand   sold   in   England.     We 
talked  of  art  and  travel  and  Monism  and  "our 
friends  in  America  who  think  as  we  do."  Then, 
with  difficulty,  Haeckel  inscribed  for  us  a  pho 
tograph  of  himself  standing  beside  the  large 
orang-outang  in  his  museum  and  afterwards 
I  visited  the  museum  and  photographed  the 
orang-outang  alone.    I  took  a  few  photographs 
of  Haeckel  at  his  table  and  desk  and  on  his 
little  second-floor  piazza,  and  as  we  left  the 
house  I  snatched  a  spray  of  elm  leaves  that  I 
knew    would    be    treasured    by    one    of    "our 
friends  in  America/' 

Haeckel  is  so  sweet,  when  he  hobbles  in  to 
meet  you,  that  your  admiration  melts  in 
wholesome  warmth.  When  he  takes  your  hand 
you  may  help  him  over  to  the  long  sofa  on 
which  he  is  forced  to  recline  since  his  fall  from 


JOTTINGS  IN  EUROPE  149 

a  bookshelf  a  few  years  ago,  that  has  made 
it  impossible  for  him  to  walk  alone  and  very 
difficult  for  him  to  work.  His  fine  gray  eyes 
glint  expectantly  in  the  center  of  the  great 
masses  of  white  hair  that  surround  his  face; 
and  all  is  serene  and  beautiful. 

A  labor  of  love  and  a  love  of  labor  seemed 
the  keynotes  of  his  life  and  the  secret  of  his 
accomplishment.  The  great  sorrow  of  Haeck- 
el's  advancing  age  is  that  he  cannot  work  any 
more.  His  personal  affairs  have  gone  ahead  in 
quietness  and  calm;  his  struggle  has  been  on 
the  battlefield  of  ideas.  And,  now  that  the 
fight  is  won  and  he  is  ready  to  pass  on  to  fresh 
conquests,  age  lays  a  bare  white  finger  on  his 
arm  and  says  "No,  you  have  done  enough. 
Rest  and  watch.  Sit  still  and  give  the  world 
a  chance  to  catch  up." 

After  an  hour  of  talk  about  the  uni 
verse  that  is  still  a  riddle,  a  kindly  and  radiant 
farewell,  you  march  down  the  pebbly  lane 
while  Haeckel  waves  from  the  balcony  on 
which  you  have  taken  his  picture. 


THE  TIRED  BUSINESS  MAN  AND  THE 
TIRELESS  WOMAN 

Labor  is  one  of  the  keynotes  of  American 
life.  Capital  is  the  other.  Far  more  than  they 
do  in  Europe,  these  factors  create  our  national 
characteristics  and  phenomena.  Abroad  there 
is  a  variety  of  Social  Classes.  There  are  the 
dukes,  marquises,  barons  and  knights.  Few 
of  these  labor  and  fewer  possess  capital.  They 
are  a  true  leisure  class.  But  in  America  our 
leisure  class  is  the  most  busy. 

It  is  very  creditable  over  here  to  be  busy. 
Even  an  artist  may  be  almost  respectable  if  he 
is  thoroughly  occupied — this  is,  if  he  is  with 
out  time  for  contemplation  or  inspiration.  The 
respect  in  which  busyness  is  held  has  created 
a  nation-wide  competition  to  accomplish  a  rep 
utation  for  it.  The  leisure  classes  are  natur 
ally  in  the  lead,  because  they  have  the  most 
time  in  which  to  become  busy. 

A  generation  ago,  before  so  many  men  occu 
pied  themselves  with  the  arduous  labors  of 
coupon-clipping  and  "taking  care"  of  their  es 
tates,  our  women  were  our  chief  leisure  class. 

151 


152  DEPRECIATIONS 

It  is  true  that  some  of  them  darned  socks, 
turned  out  an  occasional  dress  for  their  own 
wear,  bore  children,  did  a  bit  of  housework  and 
cooking  now  and  then,  but  these  can  scarcely 
be  regarded  as  adequate  occupations  in  a  busy 
world  like  ours.  They  were  accomplished  eas 
ily  in  the  sixteen  waking  hours  and  entirely 
in  the  home.  (One  hopes  that  no  more  than 
the  necessary  eight  hours  were  wasted  in 
sleep.) 

Today  this  condition  is  entirely  altered. 
Women  have  become  the  busiest,  and  there 
fore,  naturally  the  most  respected  part  of  the 
community.  They  have  added  to  their  for 
mer  activities  the  nerve-racking  and  very  tiring 
work  of  tri-weekly  or  often  daily  shopping 
tours.  In  these  the  not-to-be-overemphasized 
task  of  selecting  suitable  apparel  for  morning, 
afternoon,  evening  and  night,  with  all  acces 
sories  to  match,  has  been  thrust  upon  them  in 
lieu  of  the  simple  difficulty  of  the  former  gen 
eration  which  merely  consisted  in  suiting  the 
apparel  to  the  pocket-book.  Now  this  mun 
dane  and  disreputable  consideration  of  finances 
has  come  to  be  properly  disregarded  and  only 
the  questions  of  beauty,  style,  workmanship, 


THE  TIRED  BUSINESS  MAN  153 

color-tone  in  relation  to  personality  and  like 
high-minded  matters  come  up  for  debate. 

Similarly  we  have  the  substitution  of  the 
new  type  of  dance  for  the  old  waltz  and  two- 
step.  A  generation  ago  women  regarded  danc 
ing  as  a  great  delight  and  engaged  in  it  on  one 
evening  or  two  in  a  week.  Now  dancing  has 
been  established,  not  only  as  one  of  the  fine 
arts,  but  more  especially  as  an  important  form 
of  exercise.  So  we  have  it  engaged  in  daily, 
and  instead  of  employing  the  late  evening 
hours,  when  the  body  is  supposed  to  be  fa 
tigued,  we  have  the  fresh  luncheon  time  and 
afternoon  devoted  to  this  excellent  occupation. 
Time  is  economized  by  lunching  right  in  the 
dance-hall  and  dancing  between  courses.  The 
drinking  of  whisky,  gin  and  the  like,  which  is 
reputed  to  be  an  accompaniment  of  these 
wholesome  athletics,  is  merely  the  using  of  a 
few  slight  stimulants  or  digestives  such  as  are 
commonly  found  necessary  by  very  active 
people.  So  the  the  dansant  has  become  an  ac 
ceptable  and  revered  national  institution.  It 
we  have  seized  upon  it  with  an  avidity  that  as 
tonishes  the  French,  who  first  introduced  the 
scheme,  that  must  merely  be  attributed  to  our 


154  DEPRECIATION 

American  ambition  to  reap  the  full  benefit  of 
an  institution  as  soon  as  we  have  discovered 
it  is  good.  That  is  what  we  did  with  our  pro 
tective  tariff,  and  it  is  what  we  are  doing  with 
our  "anti-vice"  crusades. 

And  in  this  latter  connection  we  must  not 
forget  our  women.  Speaking,  agitating,  start 
ing  up  societies,  offices,  newspapers,  publishing 
pamphlets,  holding  meetings,  they  have  quite 
revolutionized  American  life  and  thought,  as  it 
relates  to  the  one  great  Vice  that  interests  them. 
Out  of  the  mouths  of  babes  and  sucklings 
cometh  truth — on  this  subject  above  all  others. 
Every  virgin  can  discuss  venereal  diseases  and 
the  statistics  of  prostitution  are  commonplaces 
of  drawTing-room  conversation.  We  can  easily 
imagine  what  labor  had  to  be  put  forth  to 
bring  this  about. 

And  so  it  is  with  the  vote.  What  men  had 
come  to  regard  as  a  mere  incidental  to  smooth 
existence,  a  means  to  the  end  of  gaining  great 
er  leisure  for  other  things,  women  proved  to 
be  a  wonderful  wray  to  extreme  and  vigorous 
activity  in  and  for  itself.  The  vote  became 
an  end,  something  to  fight  for,  die  for,  get 


THE  TIRED  BUSINESS  MAN  155 

divorced  for.  Its  significance  was  immediately 
felt. 

And  so  it  is  all  along  the  line.  The  unim 
portant  things  have  sprung  into  prominence, 
the  means  have  become  ends,  the  incidentals 
are  now  essentials.  All  of  which  has  supplied 
infinite  activity  to  those  who  were  supposed 
to  be  leisured,  or  at  least  to  have  no  more  try 
ing  tasks  than  being  mothers  and  teachers, 
friends,  home-makers  and  the  like. 

Now,  what  has  occurred  on  the  other  side? 
Man,  who  had  come  to  take  his  vote  lightly, 
to  regard  dancing  as  an  occasional  amusement 
for  leisured  evenings,  and  prostitution  as  an 
inheritance  of  the  ages,  an  inevitable  comple 
ment  and  accompaniment  of  marriage,  man  has 
been  jerked  up  suddenly  by  his  supposed  lesser, 
if  better,  half.  His  newspapers,  his  magazines, 
his  drama.,  his  clergymen  and  lectures  all  as 
sure  him  that  he  been  wasting  his  time.  To 
what  have  his  days  been  given,  and  his  nights  ? 

First  of  all,  he  has  generally  been  taking  his 
full  allotment  of  slumber.  Then,  rising  to  a 
plentiful  breakfast,  he  has  journeyed  town- 
wards  at  8.30  or  at  9.00  to  attend  to  the  rou 
tine  work  of  telephone  messages,  letter  dictat- 


156  DEPRECIATIONS 

ing,  personal  interviews  and  the  rest,  broken 
conveniently  at  12  or  1  by  a  refreshing  hour 
with  a  friend  or  two  at  lunch.  Then  followed 
the  more  leisurely  afternoon,  with  a  pleasant 
walk,  a  drink  or  two,  and  the  return  home 
in  time  for  dinner.  Of  course,  during  his 
busiest  season,  there  may  not  have  been  more 
than  half  an  hour  at  luncheon,  and  the  wor 
ries  of  the  morning  may  have  extended  over 
into  the  afternoon.  But  they  were  usually 
broken  by  a  variety  of  activities  that  rendered 
even  the  most  irksome,  interesting. 

Such  is  the  man's  life — corresponding  to 
the  woman's  that  has  been  described.  Neither 
is  that  of  the  very  poor,  for  the  poor  of  either 
sex  must  never  be  mentioned  as  typical  of  our 
great  American  commonwealth.  They  are  an 
unimportant  occurence,  an  incidental  to  the 
production  of  capital — the  eighty  millions  of 
them — what  the  biologists  would  call  a  "sport," 
or  a  variation  from  type,  as  regards  the  glori 
ous  life  of  our  excellent  country. 

No,  there  must  be  no  poor,  and  if  there  are 
poor,  we  must  simply  forget  it.  The  middle 
and  upper  classes  only  are  representative. 

And  in  these,  the  women  are  carrying  the 


THE  TIRED  BUSINESS  MAN  157 

burden  of  activity.  They  have  made  them 
selves  most  admirably  busy.  They  have  filled 
the  moments  to  overflowing  and  have  fixed 
things  so  that  when  they  too  come  home  at 
night,  the  tiredness  of  their  husbands  shall  be 
as  nought  compared  with  their  own.  So,  very 
properly,  the  plays  of  the  tired  business  man 
are  passing  out  of  our  theatres,  and  we  have 
instead  the  plays  of  the  tirelessly  busy  woman: 
the  plays  which  treat  of  her  and  the  subjects 
she  agitates,  which  discuss,  condemn  and  mor 
alize  as  she  discusses,  condemns  and  moralizes 
during  the  day.  We  call  it  a  great  moral 
awakening. 

In  such  an  awakening  can  there  fail  to  be 
benefit?  One  never  knows.  Woman  will  get 
the  vote,  as  she  certainly  should,  if  it  amuses 
her  to  have  it.  Woman  is  already  able  to 
smoke  and  drink  like  the  veriest  male.  These 
habits  will  harm  her  little,  for  she,  like  her 
sons  and  fathers,  will  learn  moderation  with 
practice.  Then  also,  she  has  achieved  the  free 
dom  of  the  mouth:  she  may  talk  as  she  pleases 
and  be  proper  none  the  less.  And  that  is  as 
it  should  be ;  for  the  cure  for  the  evils  of  free 
dom  is  still  more  freedom.  It  is  well  that 


158  DEPRECIATIONS 

woman  should  be  a  bit  busy,  and  that  man 
should  realize  that  he  doesn't  really  work  him 
self  to  death  for  the  sake  of  his  beloved;  it  is 
well  that  the  stage  should  abandon  a  few  of 
its  musical  comedies  in  favor  of  even  the  stu 
pidest  sex  discussion,  and  that  the  pulpit  should 
substitute  sociology  for  some  of  the  ethics  that 
have  no  longer  any  weight.  Whether  the  mil- 
lenium  is  coming  through  all  of  it  is  another 
matter. 


THE  UNMARRYING  MODERN  MALE 

The  "old  bachelor"  of  the  last  generation  is 
a  commonplace  of  second-rate  farces  and  old 
women's  conversations.  Mildly  expressed,  he 
is  unpromising  material  for  either,  and  impos 
sible  for  literary  exploitation.  In  fact,  the 
clever  have  given  him  up  even  in  discourse 
and  so  he  is  gradually  passing  out  of  existence. 
Untalked  of  types  do  that;  just  as  the  reverse 
occurs  with  types  that  attain  widespread  dis 
cussion.  It  is  possible,  for  example,  that  the 
army  of  the  prostitutes  will  be  inflated  by  the 
hundred  recent  articles  and  volumes  dealing 
with  them. 

But  although  the  no  longer  interesting  bach 
elor  is  ceasing,  many  men  continue  to  refrain 
from  marriage  and  the  growing  group  that 
does  so  is  naturally  typified  in  the  few  that 
possess  definite  characteristics.  One  realizes, 
most  especially,  what  these  new  bachelors  are 
not.  Physically  they  are  not  large-stomached 
animals  with  thick  lips,  hairless  heads,  pro 
truding  eyes,  livid  complexions,  bad  digestions 
and  flapping  hands.  In  other  words,  they  have 
not  the  easily  recognizable  qualities  of  their 

159 


160  DEPRECIATIONS 

predecessors.  Similarly  this  new  clan  is  not 
fat-headed,  hot-headed  or  pig-headed ;  nor  does 
it  snore  unduly,  finger  its  female  acquaint 
ances,  nor  play  cards  three  evenings  a  week. 

The  motive  power  of  this  modern  group  is 
at  the  same  time  noble  and  petty,  and  its  at 
titude  is  cowardly  and  brave.  It  is  fearful  of 
woman  and  fearless  of  all  else.  It  is  an  inter 
esting  body  because  it  is  interested  in  all 
things.  It  fears  neither  wealth  nor  poverty, 
success  nor  failure,  but  the  men  who  make  it 
up  insist  that  whatever  the  result  of  their  as 
pirations  may  be,  it  shall  be  for  them,  for  them 
as  free  individualities  without  obligations  save 
as  they  choose  to  assume  them  and  as  they  are 
free  to  discard  them  again. 

Obviously  such  men  cannot,  under  the  pres 
ent  customs  of  society,  publicly  assume  the 
positions  of  fathers  and  husbands.  The  mo 
ment  the  marriage  service  is  considered  there 
at  once  looms  up  the  vision  of  a  host  of  duties 
and  restrictions  enforced  in  each  case  by  its 
appropriate  and  dire  penalty.  Clearly  as  we 
may  recognize  the  growing  facility  with  which 
divorce  may  be  secured  and  the  increasing  ease 
with  which  liasons  may  be  consummated; 


THE  UNMARRYING  MODERN  MALE  161 

readily  as  we  admit  the  growing  independence 
and  individuality  of  the  husband  and  wife  as 
such;  society  is  still  very,  very  far  from  pro 
viding  for  the  man  as  mate  and  father,  and 
for  the  woman  as  mate  and  mother,  and  for 
the  child  also,  a  position  that  may  be  regarded 
as  primary.  All  are  as  yet  secondary  types, 
types  without  a  recognized,  separate,  individ 
ual  purpose  in  life,  and  therefore  types  com 
posed  of  men  and  women  who,  insofar  as  they 
are  typical,  are  without  encouragement  or  pro 
vision  for  free  and  genuine  self-expression. 

Against  this  condition  the  thoroughly  mod 
ern  male  unequivocally  rebels.  He  rebels 
against  the  convention  that  prescribes  that  if 
he  is  rich  he  shall  strive  eternally  to  be  richer 
so  that  his  wife  may  fulfill  each  new  contri 
vance  for  spending  ever  more  and  more.  He 
rebels  against  the  convention  which  limits  his 
companionship  according  to  the  abilities  or 
needs  or  fancies  of  his  arch  companion. 
Chiefly  and  most  deeply  is  his  rebellion  directed 
against  the  demand  that  his  method  of  work, 
the  kind  and  manner  of  his  amusement,  the 
time  of  his  slumber  and  the  nature  of  his  food 
be  dominated  by  another  human  being,  no  mat- 


162  DEPRECIATIONS 

ter  how  intimately  connected  with  him  she  may 
be. 

The  struggle  of  the  modern  man  is  an  ef 
fort  to  reachieve  those  inherent,  natural  liber 
ties  without  which  life  becomes  existence  and 
effort  turns  into  the  dead  pursuit  of  an  un 
valued  goal. 

These  new  men  realize  in  themselves  the  ar 
dent  need  for  a  freedom  that  once  was  man's 
but  that  he  has  allowed  to  lapse,  as  woman's 
position  has  developed  from  a  secondary  into 
a  primary  one.  For  today,  however  subor 
dinate  she  may  be  as  wife  and  mother  (in  that 
her  own  personality  is  not  her  prime  concern 
in  these  capacities),  woman  as  woman  is  rap 
idly  becoming  a  first-rate  type.  As  such  she 
is  represented  typically  by  the  "new  woman" 
who  has  been  so  frequently  discussed  as  to 
be  almost  understood. 

The  new  man  is  the  member  of  society  who 
best  understands  the  new  woman.  He  be 
comes  her  friend  and  her  helper;  he  encour 
ages  her  in  her  self-affirmation;  he  interprets 
her  to  the  rest  of  the  world  and  analyses  the 
half -under  stood  ideals  that  she  is  trying  to 


THE  UNMARRYING  MODERN  MALE  163 

express.  Beyond  that,  his  rebellion  starts,  for 
he  refuses  to  support  her  or  her  children,  or 
to  sacrifice  to  them  his  primary  purposes  as  a 
human  being. 

As  yet  the  new  woman  continues  to  make 
the  demands  of  the  old-fashioned  type.  She 
insists  that  her  motherhood  shall  be  clothed 
with  marriage  and,  in  general,  that  support 
shall  be  given  and  sacrifice  made  to  her.  But 
since  the  latter  demand  is  already  lessening, 
it  is  likely  that  even  the  former  will  be  some 
day  relinquished,  and  then  a  perfectly  free  and 
fundamental  equality  may  arise.  Until  then, 
the  war  of  the  sexes  must  remain  a  fact  and 
the  woman  movement  must  be  partial  and  in 
consistent. 


THE  KINGDOM  OF  THIS  WORLD 

There  probably  is  not  a  single  person  in  the 
entire  world  who,  if  his  time  could  all  be  spent 
in  thinking  and  his  mind  were  adequate  to  the 
solution  of  any  problem,  would  not  set  him 
self,  sooner  or  later,  to  finding  out  what  ex 
pression  his  personality  required  and  how  that 
could  most  effectively  be  accomplished.  That 
is  the  same  as  saying  that  about  the  most  in 
teresting  question  for  all  the  world  not  ab 
sorbed  in  burrowing  for  tomorrow's  breakfast 
is  what  the  world  needs,  individually  and  col 
lectively,  together  with  information  as  to  how 
it  has  been  getting  at  this,  and  how  it  can  be 
helped  to  do  so  better  in  the  future. 

Some  men  tell  us  that  our  chiefest  need  is 
a  condition  of  mind  and  body  presumed  to  be 
appropriate  for  life  in  a  universe  other  than 
that  of  our  only  assured  existence;  although 
the  army  of  these  is  not  so  great  or  stern  to 
day  as  in  some  earlier  centuries.  These  ana 
chronistic  folk  need  not  concern  themselves 
with  the  fitness  of  their  plan  of  living  for  the 
conditions  of  our  lifetime  since  their  interests 
lie  confessedly  beyond  death.  To  them  it  is 

165 


166  DEPRECIATIONS 

rightfully  more  important  to  render  men 
kings  beyond  the  Styx  than  to  free  them  from 
being  slaves  beside  the  Hudson.  And  so  to 
the  teaching  of  these  good  men,  of  whatever 
faith  or  creed,  belong  the  modified  but  still  per 
sistent  moralities  of  the  ages  and  the  handed 
down  conventions  that  control  our  lives. 

But  although  we  of  the  majority  adhere  to 
these  moralities  and  bear  with  these  conven 
tions,  we  are  not,  any  longer,  concerned  im 
portantly  with  the  purpose  of  those  who  gave 
these  ethics  to  mankind.  The  chief  intent  of 
us  of  earthly  attitude — the  majority — is  not 
a  fitting  preparation  for  a  kingdom  that  is 
not  of  this  world,  but  a  working  method  for  a 
democracy  that  is.  And  so  it  comes  about 
that  we  shirkers  of  activity  who  devote  our 
energies  to  thought  are  realizing  that  some  of 
man's  noblest,  most  accredited  principles  are 
vSurvivals  of  an  earlier  time,  inspired  by  a 
viewpoint  totally  dissimilar  to  our  own. 

The  obvious  moralities,  all,  in  fact,  upon  ob 
servation  prove  to  be  the  product  of  the  early 
age  of  faith,  when  mankind  tossed  on  the  bed 
of  infancy — and  not  a  bed  of  roses  was  it,  with 
the  massacres  and  incest  and  the  lack  of  com- 


THE  KINGDOM  OF  THIS  WORLD       167 

fort  and  intelligence  that  prevailed.  Such  mod 
ifications  as  exist  today  were  merely  grafted  on 
the  teachings  of  the  earliest  prophets  of  all 
countries  who  all,  peculiarly  enough,  taught 
quite  the  same  moralities.  The  age  of  these 
dogmatic  dictates  has,  most  strangely,  been 
accepted  as  an  argument  for  their  continuance 
and  truth.  It  is  as  if  we  insisted  on  the  pow 
ers  of  the  good-luck-giving  swastika  simply 
because  it  has  been  found  everywhere  since 
the  dawn  of  history.  Fortunately,  however, 
the  unamended  acceptance  of  the  principles  has 
been  confined  in  a  measure  to  argument:  in 
practice,  an  always  growing  portion  of  each 
succeeding  generation  has  dealt  with  life  solely 
as  its  own  intelligence  directed. 

This  practice — this  revolutionary  non-adher 
ence  to  the  dogmatism  of  the  dead — appears 
to  have  been  responsible  for  every  single  con 
tribution  made  by  advancing  civilization. 
Broadly  speaking,  the  arts  and  the  sciences 
have  alone  created  the  advance;  and  these  are 
in  their  inmost  and  essential  nature  totally  un 
moral.  The  joining  of  all  portions  of  man 
kind,  at  first  by  shipping,  then  by  railroads, 
then  by  cables  and  the  telegraph  and  last  of  all 


168  DEPRECIATIONS 

by  the  telephone,  the  wireless  and  the  aero 
plane,  all  of  this  mighty  conquest  of  inimical 
nature,  has  come  down  to  us  without  relation 
to  the  principles  of  the  prophets  or  the  fussings 
of  the  fathers.  Incidentally,  certainly,  some 
sciences  have  helped  to  bring  about  more  unity 
among  the  species — a  condition  desired  by  the 
moralists — but  the  accomplishments  themselves 
and  the  true  and  fundamental  viewpoint  of 
those  who  helped  to  furnish  them  was  utterly, 
superbly  separated  from  the  wranglings  of  the 
raisonneurs. 

Likewise  in  the  perfection  of  the  machinery 
that  has  given  us  undreamed  of  comforts,  in 
the  home,  the  street,  the  warehouse,  factory, 
field  and  farm — all  totally  unmoral,  all  in  es 
sence  quite  unethical.  And  most  of  all  in  art! 
Pictures,  poems,  stories,  plays,  figures  in 
bronze  and  marble,  music  of  dances,  songs  and 
symphonies — every  authentic  one  of  them 
pouring  forth  with  the  divine  sweat  of  its  crea 
tor  quite  regardless  of  heaven  and  hell!  Of 
course  the  pictures  dealt  with  madonnas  and 
magi  and  the  poems  used  plentifully  the  name 
of  the  Father  and  the  Child,  but  only  for  the 


THE  KINGDOM  OF  THIS  WORLD       169 

sake  of  the  Master  and  the  God  of  all,  Art; 
and  because  the  people  of  the  world  could  un 
derstand  and  read  and  see  only  if  art  expressed 
itself  in  those  forms  that  regrettably  obsessed 
the  world. 

What  did  it  matter  in  the  great  eternal 
march  of  things  whether  Galileo  believed  in 
Purgatory,  or  Leonardo  loved  his  friend's 
wife,  or  Shakespeare  was  homogenic,  or  Lin 
coln  swore?  These  men  had  thoughts  to  give, 
seeds  to  sow,  creations  to  hand  down,  all  of 
them  of  unquestionable,  palpable,  self-evident 
value  to  the  race.  Naturally  the  prejudices 
and  conventions  of  their  times  could  hamper 
them,  or  even,  in  some  terrible  periods  of  his 
tory,  quite  silence  them,  and  so  destroy  their 
message  or  their  gift,  but  fundamentally,  es 
sentially,  is  not  their  just  relation  to  all  his 
toric  faiths  and  all  moralities  the  same  rela 
tion  as  Pegasus  might  be  conceived  as  bear 
ing  to  his  trappings  ?  They  could  control  him, 
make  him  fall  or  stumble  in  his  flight,  but 
the  sublime  and  glory-smitten  impetus  came 
from  another  source  and  could  not  be  created 
by  the  most  elaborate  and  best  fitting  livery. 


170  DEPRECIATIONS 

So  it  is  that  the  conventional,  unquestioning 
morality  and  mental  attitude  of  the  majority 
appears  to-day  peculiarly  unfitted  to  the  solu 
tion  of  the  great  problem  which  the  majority 
seem  ready  to  accept  as  their  most  urgent  care : 
the  finding  out  of  what  the  worldly  purpose  of 
man  is  and  how  this  may  be  best  fulfilled.    It  is 
not  a  matter  of  throwing  over  the  vast  virtues 
we  are  told  to-day  to  value.    It  is  not  a  simple 
rejection  of  religion  or  of  law.     Freedom  to 
think  is  the  essential:   the  clarifying  of  our 
mental  processes  by  the  removing  of  impeding 
prejudices  from  our  minds — then  it  makes  lit 
tle  difference  whether  or  not  we  live  according 
to   their   present   dictates.      We    shall   never 
achieve  a  world  of  geniuses.  We  can,  however, 
spread  the  attitude  of  genius,  the  creative  at 
titude  of  the  arts  and  sciences;  we  can  substi 
tute  this,  and  iWe  must,  for  the  conventional 
negations.    Let  the  minds  of  the  world  be  free 
and  we  may  well  believe  that  Life  will  walk 
the  roads  most  suited  to  its  welfare.     And 
thought  and  faith  and  speculation  on  the  fu 
ture  and  the  past,  the  desirable  and  the  ill,  will 
not  be  dead,  but  will  be  following  as  servants 


THE  KINGDOM  OF  THIS  WORLD       171 

in  the  train  of  Life,  not  clutching  at  its  throat 
with  the  fingers  of  dogma;  while  on  will  sweep 
the  army,  ever  faster,  through  the  slaveless 
kingdom  that,  completely  and  imposingly,  is, 
is  of  this  world. 


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